390 CLASS AVES. 



Some of these birds live in flocks, with their congeners, and 

 with various other little birds ; others remain in pairs, but 

 none of them climb. The Creoles of Cayenne confound them 

 with the humming-birds, because, like them, they flutter 

 round flowers, to catch with their bills the insects there 

 concealed. They make their nests, at least the species whose 

 mode of life is known, with great art, suspending it by the 

 base to the extremity of a weak and mobile branch, with its 

 aperture turned towards the ground. This construction and 

 position places the brood and the mother in a state of shelter 

 from spiders, lizards, and other enemies. Four eggs is the 

 usual number laid, and this is repeated many times in the 

 course of the year. Of the habits of Diceum and Meli- 

 THREPTUs, nothing is known. 



Belonging to the latter genus is the bird here figured under 

 the name of Byron's creeper, which was brought by Captain 

 Lord Byron to England from the South Sea, and is in the 

 British Museum under M. Temminck's generic name of 

 Drepanis, the Melithreptus of Vieillot. It is yellowish-red, 

 except the quills, which are deep chocolate; the edges of 

 the outer wing-feathers are edged with white. 



The SouiMANGAs, (CiNNYRis,) are so called from the 

 name given by the inhabitants of Madagascar to a bird of 

 their country, and the word in their language signifies sugar- 

 eater. Montbeillard has generalized it for all these birds. 

 Linnaeus, Latham, and other naturalists, have classed them 

 in the division of creepers (certhia), with which, in fact, 

 they have no relation, except in the curvature of the bill ; 

 and even this, in most of them, differs, by having the two 

 mandibles toothed like a saw on their edges ; but the den- 

 telations are so fine that they cannot be perceived but by the 

 aid of a convex lens. They c^respond so closely that they 

 catch in each other. 



The term creepers cannot, with any sort of propriety, 

 be applied to these birds, for they do not climb ; and their 



