HUMMING-BIRD 445 
found by the “trochilidists,” or special students of the 77ochilidz, 
insufficient for the purpose of arranging these birds in groups, and 
characters on which genera can be founded have to be sought in 
the style and coloration of plumage, as well as in the form and 
proportions of those parts which are most generally deemed 
sufficient to furnish them. Looking to the large number of species 
to be taken into account, convenience has demanded what science 
would withhold, and the genera established by the ornithologists of 
a preceding generation have been broken up by their successors 
into multitudinous sections—the more adventurous making from 
150 to 180 of such groups, the modest being content with 120 or 
thereabouts, but the last dignifying each of them by the title of 
genus. It is of course obvious that these small divisions cannot 
be here considered in detail, nor would much advantage accrue by 
giving statistics from the works of the latest trochilidists, Messrs. 
Gould,! Mulsant,? and Elliot.2 It would be as unprofitable here 
to trace the successive steps by which the original genus 7’rochilus 
of Linneus, or the two genera Polytmus and Mellisuga of Brisson, 
have been split into others, or have been added to, by modern 
writers, for not one of these professes to have arrived at any final, 
but only a provisional, arrangement ; it seems, however, expedient 
to notice the fact that some of the authors of the last century 
supposed themselves to have seen the way to dividing what we 
now know as the Family Trochilidx into two groups, the distinction 
between which was that in the one the bill was arched and in the 
other straight, since that difference has been insisted on in many 
works. This was especially the view taken by Brisson and Buffon, 
who termed the birds having the arched bill “ Colibris,” and those 
having it straight “ Oiseawa-mouches.” The distinction wholly 
breaks down, not merely because there are Tyochilidx which possess 
almost every gradation of decurvation of the bill, but some which 
have the bill upturned after the manner of an Avoset,® while 
it may be remarked that several of the species placed by those 
authorities among the “Colibris” are not Humming-birds at all.® 
1 4 Monograph of the Trochilide or Humming-birds, 5 vols. imp. fol. 
London: 1861 (with Introduction in 8vo). 
2 Histoire naturelle des Oiseaux-Mouches ou Colibris, 4 vols. with supplement, 
imp. 4to, Lyon-Genéve-Bale: 1874-77. 
3 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 317, A Classification and 
Synopsis of the Trochilidz, 1 vol. imp. 4to, Washington: 1879. 
+ Salerne must be excepted, especially as he was rebuked by Buffon for doing 
what we now deem right. 
5 For example Avocettula recurvirostris of Guiana and A. ewryptera of 
Colombia. 
6 Mr. Salvin’s list (Cat. B. Br. Mus. xvi. pp. 27-433), and Mr. Ridgway’s 
work (Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus. 1890, pp. 253-380) can only be named here, as neither 
appeared in time for the results to be utilized in this article. 
