442 HUMMING-BIRD 



about the end of the year 1552.^ The name still survives in the 

 French Oiseau-mouclie ; but the ordinary Spanish appellation is, and 

 long has been, Tominejo, from fomin, signifying a weight equal to 

 the third part of an adarme or drachm, and used metaphorically for 

 anything very small. Humming-birds, however, have been called 

 by a variety of other names, many of them derived from American 

 languages, such as Giiainumbi, Ourissia and Colibri, to say nothing 

 of others bestowed upon them (chiefly from some peculiarity of 

 habit) by Europeans, like Pica/lores, Chuparosa and Froufrou. 

 Barrere, in 1745, conceiving that Humming-birds were allied to the 

 Wren, the Trochilus,^ in part, of Pliny, applied that name in a 

 generic sense (Ornith. Spec, novum, pp. 47, 48) to both. Taking the 

 hint thus afforded, Linnaeus very soon after went further, and, 

 excluding the Wrens, founded his genus Trochilus for the reception 

 of such Humming-birds as were known to him. The unfortunate 

 act of the great nomenclator cannot be set aside ; and, since his 

 time, ornithologists with but few exceptions have followed his 

 example, so that nowadays Humming-birds are universally recog- 

 nized as forming the Family Trochilidai. 



The relations of the Trochilidai to other birds were for a long 

 while very imperfectly Understood. Nitzsch first drew attention to 

 their agreement in many essential characters with the Cypselidaz 

 (Swifts), and placed the two Families in one group, which he 

 called Macrochires, from the great length of their manual bones, or 

 those forming the extremity of the wing. The name was perhaps 

 not very happily chosen, for it is not the distal portion that is so 

 much out of ordinary proportion to the size of the bird, but the 

 proximal and median portions, that in both Families are curiously 



^ See also Prof. Morley's Life of Girolamo Cardano (ii. pp. 152, 153). 



- Under this name Pliuy perpetuated {Hist. Nat. viii. 25) the confusion that 

 had doubtless arisen before his time of two very distinct birds. As Sundevall 

 remarks {Tentamen, p. 87 note), rpox^Xos was evidently the name commonly given 

 by the ancient Greeks to the smaller Plovers, and was not improperly applied by 

 Herodotus (ii. 68) to the species that feeds in the open mouth of the Crocodile — 

 the Pluvianus aegyptius of modern ornithologists — in which sense Aristotle (Hist. 

 Anivi. ix. 6) also uses it. But the received text of Aristotle has two other 

 passages (ix. 1 and 11) wherein the word appears in a wholly different connexion, 

 and can there be only taken to mean the Wren — the usual Greek name of which 

 would seem to be 6'px'^os (Sundevall, Om Aristotl. Djurarter, No. 54). Though 

 none of his editors or commentators have suggested the possibility of such a 

 thing, one can hardly help suspecting that in these passages some early copyist 

 has substituted rpoxiXos for 6pxi^os, and so laid the foundation of a curious error. 

 It may be here remarked that the Crocodile of St. Domingo is said to have the 

 like office done for it bj'^ some kind of bird, which is called by Descourtilz 

 (Voyage, iii. p. 26) a " Todier," but, as Geoffr. St. Hilaire observes (Descr. de 

 r^gypte, ed. 2, xxiv. p. 440), is more probably a Plover. Unfortunately the 

 fauna of Hispaniola is not much better known now than in Oviedo's days. 



