442 HUMMING-BIRD 
about the end of the year 1552.1. The name still survives in the 
French Oiseau-mouche ; but the ordinary Spanish appellation is, and 
long has been, Yominejo, from tomin, 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 Guainumbt, Ourissia and Colibri, to say nothing 
of others bestowed upon them (chiefly from some peculiarity of 
habit) by Europeans, like Picaflores, 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, Linnzus very soon after went further, and, 
excluding the Wrens, founded his genus 7’rochilus 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 Z7vochilidz. 
The relations of the Zrochilide to other birds were for a long 
while very imperfectly understood. Nitzsch first drew attention to 
their agreement in many essential characters with the Cypselidx 
(Swirts), 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 
1 See also Prof. Morley’s Life of Girolamo Cardano (ii. pp. 152, 153). 
2 Under this name Pliny perpetuated (Hist. Nat. viii. 25) the confusion that 
had doubtless arisen before his time of two very distinct birds. As Sundevall 
remarks (Z'entamen, p. 87 note), tpoxiAos 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 zgyptius of modern ornithologists—in which sense Aristotle (Hist. 
‘Anim. 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 épxiAos (Sundevall, Om Aristotl. Djwrarter, 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 tpoxidos for SpxAos, 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 by some kind of bird, which is called by Descourtilz 
(Voyage, iii. p. 26) a “‘ Todier,” but, as Geoffr. St. Hilaire observes (Descr. de 
VEgypte, 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. 
