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 
Nectariniide and the Meliphagide.! 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 with confluent specks of greenish- 
grey. 
The Nectariniide 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text left little to be desired, and of course superseded all that had 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 :—Neodrepaninx, consisting of a single genus and 
species peculiar to Madagascar ; Nectariniine, containing 9 genera, 
one of which, Cinnyris, has more than half the number of species in 
the whole group ; and Arachno- 
therine (sometimes known as 
“‘Spider-hunters”), with 2 
genera including 11 species— 
all large in size and plain in ARACHNOTHERA. (After Swainson.) 
hue. To these he also added 
the genus PROMEROPS (p. 743), the affinity 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 Necta- 
riniide. 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 Lurypyga 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 (V. nérdl. Beytr. ii. pp. 
48-54, pl. 3) a good description and fair figure of it, calling it the 
1 Cf. Gadow, op. cit. 1883, pp. 62-69, pl. xvi. 
