256 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



this engine is euiployed I am unable to state. Unfortunately for me 

 many specimens of the fine species Cometes sparganurus* in my posses- 

 sion have been obtained by means of birdlime, and this is evidently 

 the way in which these birds are captured in the neighborhood of 

 Chuquisaca." 



On account of the immense destruction of Humming Birds for the 

 various ornamental purposes mentioned above, certain species are said 

 to be on the verge of extinction. The wonder is that they are not long 

 ago extinct, for the number of individuals which have been destroyed 

 is simply beyond computation. Three thousand skins of the Ruby-aud- 

 topaz Humming Bird {Gkrysolampis moschitus) alone are said to have 

 been shipped from a Brazilian port in a single consignment, while at a 

 public sale of bird skins, held in London, March 21, 1888, more than 

 12,000 Hamming Bird skins were disposed of! And in one week during 

 the same year, there were sold at auction in London 400,000 Hum- 

 ming Birds, and other birds from North and South America, the former 

 doubtless comprising a very considerable jjercentageof the whole num- 

 ber.! Surely this stupendous slaughter foreshadows the speedy exter- 

 mination of many species. If it does not, what a commentary on the 

 amazing wealth of bird-life in the tropics of America I 



EARLY HISTORY. 



Humming Birds being one of the special products of the New World, 

 and consequently unknown to the ancients,| it of course follows that 

 their literature is confined to the period following the discovery of 

 America by Columbus. According to Lesson, "The first mention 

 which is made of Humming Birds in the narratives of adventurers 

 who proceeded to America, not with the design of studying its nat- 

 ural productions, but for the discovery of gold, dates from 1558, and 

 is to be found in Les Singularites de la France Antarctique (Brazil) 

 of Audr6 Thevet and Jean de Lery, companions of La Villegaignon, 

 who attempted in 1555 to found a French colony there; but these su- 

 perficial accounts would not have unfolded their natural history had 

 not the old naturalists who published their observations at the com- 

 mencement of the seventeenth century taken care to make them better 

 known ; and we find some good accounts of them in the voluminous 

 compilation of Nieremberg, in the collection of fragments from the great 

 works of Hernandez or Fernandez, and in those of Piso. Ximenez, 

 Acosta, Gomara, Marcgrave, Garcilasso, and Dutertre often mention 



* For a description of this exquisitely beautiful bird see pages 308, 309. 



t This information is taken from The Auk, July, 1888, pp. 334, 335. 



t It is true that the name of the typical genus (Trochilus), from which the name of 

 the family {TrocMUdo',) is taken, is a classical Greek name, Tpox'-'ko^, trochilus or tro- 

 chiloe ; but the bird so called by Herodotus was the Crocodile bird (Pluvianus wgyp- 

 tius), a small, ploverlike bird, which is said to feed upon the leeches which fasten 

 themselves to the crocodile, even entering the monster's open mouth to do so. 



