1 GO INTRODUCTION. 



will be found in some way adapted to secure the 

 peculiar insects which may afford them sustenance. 

 The Hoopoe is an example among our native birds, 

 while the Cornish Chough will furnish another still 

 more striking ; for in fact the bill of Melithreptus 

 is almost a model of that of Pyrracorax, both of 

 them entire, finely attenuated, and much curved ; 

 and Montague speaks of the aptness and facility 

 with which our native bird could procure minute 

 objects. We do not mean by these remarks to 

 insist that the Sun-birds are not partially meli- 

 phagous, because we know the contrary ; but we 

 think that their fine colouring, and habitation amidst 

 sweets and beautiful blossoms, have been too much 

 associated with delicacy of food as a cause of the 

 former, and have given, as it were, a poetical licence 

 to their describers. 



Vaillant, considering the sweet juices of plants 

 to be the sole food of the Sun-birds, looks at 

 the tongue only as a member for collecting honey. 

 He describes it, exteriorly, of a horny substance, 

 hollowed, and forming a kind of tube, of which 

 the anterior extremity is supplied with many nerv- 

 ous threads, forming the seat of taste, and also 

 serving as a kind of sieve to prevent the grosser 

 matters to pass; while the horns of the hyoid 

 bone, being lengthened, pass over the skull and serve 

 as the same parts in the Woodpecker, to dart out 

 or protrude the tongue for the purpose of reaching 

 support, whether vegetable or animal, which is con- 

 cealed in the deep tubes or corollas of many gorge- 



