Recently published Ornithological Works. 479 



New-Guinea birds, describing the contents of two collections 

 that have recently come before him. No new species are 

 characterized in either paper ; but several important identifi- 

 cations of names are made, especially in the former. The 

 second paper refers to birds collected at Walter Bay, about 

 60 miles east of Port Moresby ; but the character of the bird- 

 fauna seems to be quite the same as, that of the latter district. 



91. Elliot's Classification of the Trochilidce. 



[A Classification and Synopsis of the Trocliilidae. By D. G. Elliot. 

 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 317.] 



Perhaps no group of birds has been more " classified " than 

 the Humming-birds, or more lavishly provided with generic 

 names. Without enumerating the older attempts at ar- 

 ranging these birds. Gray, Bonaparte, Reichenbach, Gould, 

 Mulsant, and others have all endeavoured to classify 

 Humming-birds ; but none of their eflforts are to Mr. Elliotts 

 liking. The task is indeed a difiicult one, and, we venture to 

 think, has not even yet been accom.plished. The 426 species of 

 Trochilidse Mr. Elliot acknowledges he places in 120 genera. 

 Subfamilies he rejects altogether, the genera being arranged 

 in 49 equivalent groups, some of which consist of a single 

 genus, others of groups of genera. In drawing the cha- 

 racters of these genera, Mr. Elliot depends upon the shape 

 of the bill, its relative length, the form of the tail, and 

 other points, but he utterly rejects the distribution of colour 

 as of any generic value. Now, considering how very artificial 

 and tentative the whole system must be, we think he need 

 not have thus gone out of his way to cut out characters which 

 certainly have their value. StiU it is refreshing to find any 

 one who will even attempt to give generic characters of such 

 a complex family as the Trochilidse, and for doing so we owe 

 our thanks to Mr. Elliot. As regards nomenclature, Mr. 

 Elliot has not, considering all things, made so many changes 

 as might perhaps have been expected, and for this, too, we are 

 thankful ; we should have been more so if he had read his 

 lUiger more carefully, and let our old friend Orthorhynchus 

 alone. One new genus is proposed in this work, viz. Flo- 



