INTRODUCTION. ] 49 



in the first being the one peculiarly taken up by 

 the Meliphagidas or Honey-suckers, in the latter 

 by numerous and abundant species of Humming- 

 birds. 



When we commenced to work at the present 

 Volume, we had intended to include the whole 

 groups of the family, giving a general survey of the 

 forms, and illustrating them by figures of the more 

 typical examples only ; upon entering on the sub- 

 ject, however, we found that there were ample 

 materials to furnish sixty or seventy interesting 

 illustrations, instead of about thirty, to which in 

 the other case we should have had to restrict the 

 whole; and on this account we have decided to 

 confine it to the typical form alone, or the genus 

 Nectarinia* of Illiger, by which we shall be enabled 

 to give nearly a monograph of the species, with 

 figures of a large proportion of them. The remain- 

 ing forms may be hereafter again taken up and 

 illustrated ; nevertheless, some general observations 

 may be now required. 



The Humming-birds, or family of the Trochilidse, 

 although they want the wide gape and other acces- 

 saries around the mouth provisional for capturing 

 insects in flight, in form most closely resemble the 

 fissirostral genera, being deficient in the members 

 particularly adapted for perching, while they pos- 

 sess an extraordinary development of those proper 

 for flight. The want of adaptation, however, in 



* Nectarinia was applied by Illiger in 1811 ; Cinnyris, by 

 Cuvier, in 1816 or 1817. 



