THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE. 63 



into the order of Perching- Birds at all. However, we 

 are not concerned with the merits of this or that system 

 of classification. It is enough to remember that in 

 Jerdon's book and Barnes and all Mr. A. O. Hume's 

 publications, certain of the most striking and attractive 

 of our birds, namely, the Sunbirds, or Honey-suckers, 

 and the Hoopoe, will be found in this Tribe. 



Sunbirds are not the same as Humming-birds. The 

 Humming-bird, u Half bird, half fly, the fairy king 

 of flowers," belongs to the peculiar glories of the 

 New World. But its place in the old is taken by the 

 Sunbird, and there are so many outward resemblances 

 between them that it was natural at first to regard 

 them as very nearly allied. Their anatomy, however, 

 shows that they are radically different, and we must 

 conclude that their outward likeness depends upon 

 the fact that they are called upqn to fill a similar place 

 in the economy of things. We are all moulded by the 

 conditions of our life. Men of the same trade in differ- 

 ent countries will show similar traits of character, or 

 even a similarity of feature, in spite of all national 

 divergences. The Koli women of this coast are dis- 

 tinguished from the women of all other castes by a 

 volubility of vituperative eloquence which betrays at 

 once that they are " fish-wives, " and the barber is the 

 town gossip here as in Europe. So the warm-blooded 

 whale, living always in water, has turned its limbs 

 into fins and assumed the mask of a cold-blooded fish, 

 while the Australian Platypus has its snout trans- 

 formed into a bill like a duck, for it lives the life of a 

 duck. Examples of this kind are so common in nature 

 that we need not be surprised to find Sunbirds exhibit- 

 ing a likeness to Humming-birds in those character- 



