SUN-BITTERN 923 



some of its members of yellow or flame-coloured precostal tufts, 

 which are very characteristic of the Family, might at first sight be 

 thought not to belong here. Graceful in form and active in motion. 

 Sun-birds flit from flower to flower, feeding chiefly on small insects 

 which are attracted by the nectar ; but this is always done while 

 perched, and never on the wing as is the habit of Humming-birds. 

 The extensible tongue, though practically serving the same end in 

 both groups, is essentially different in its quasi-tubular structure, 

 and there is also considerable difference between this organ in the 

 Ncdarmiuhv, and the Mel'iplmgidx} The nests of the Sun-birds, domed 

 with a penthouse porch, and pensile from the end of a bough or 

 leaf, are very neatly built. The eggs are generally three in 

 number, of a dull white covered Avith confluent specks of greenish- 

 grey. 



The Nedariniidm formed the subject of a sumptuous Monograph by 

 Capt. Shelley (4to, London: 1876-1880), in the coloured plates of 

 which full justice was done to the varied beauties which these glori- 

 ously arrayed little beings display, while, almost every available source 

 of information having been consulted, and the results embodied, the 

 text left little to be desired, and of course superseded all that had 

 before been published about them. He divided the Family into 

 three subfamilies : — Neodrejxininx, consisting of a single genus and 

 species peculiar to Madagascar ; Nedariniinai, containing 9 genera, 

 one of which, Cinnyris, has more than half the number of species in 

 the whole group ; and Arachno- 

 therinai (sometimes known as 

 " Spider - hunters "), with 2 

 genera including 1 1 species — 



all large in size and plain in aeachnothera. (After Swaiuson.) 



hue. To these he also added 

 the genus Promerops (p. 743), the aiSnity of which to the rest can 

 as yet hardly be taken as proved. According to Mr. Layard, the 

 habits of the Cape Promerops, its mode of nidification and the 

 character of its eggs are very unlike those of the ordinary Neda- 

 riniidm. In 1883-84 Dr. Gadow {Cat. B. Br. Mus. ix. pp. 1-126, and 

 291) treated of this Family, reducing the number of both genera 

 and species, though adding a new genus discovered since the publi- 

 cation of Capt. Shelley's work, and additional species have since 

 been described. 



SUN-BITTERN, the Eurypyga helias of ornithology, a bird, that 

 has long exercised systematists and one whose proper place can 

 scarcely yet be said to have been satisfactorily determined. 



According to Pallas, who in 1781 gave (JV. n'vrdl. Beytr. ii. pp. 

 48-54, pi. 3) a good description and fair figure of it, calling it the 



1 Cf. Gadow, op. cit. 1883, pp. 62-69, pi. xvi. 



