1893.] Recent Literature. 367 
Ridgway on the Anatomy of the Humming-Birds and 
Swifts.—A Rejoinder.—What I say here has reference to Mr. 
Ridgway’s reply to my review of his “ popular monograph of the 
Humming-Birds,” which review appeared in the October NATURALIST, 
and his reply in the December following issue of that journal (1892, 
p. 1040). 
In that reply Mr. Ridgway remarks that his description of the 
humming-bird’s tongue “is substantially a condensation of MacGil- 
livray’s”* (in Audubon’s Birds of America, Vol. iv, pp. 197, 198), 
and that his “knowledge of the subject is based chiefly upon it.” 
Now one of the errors I pointed out in Mr. Ridgway’s “ Humming- 
Birds” was that he claimed the tongue in those birds was “ hollow,” 
and yet he now states that his account is a condensation of Macgil- 
livray’s lucid description. Let me contrast the statement of the two 
authors, thus: 
MACGILLIVRAY. 
In the tongue of the humming- 
bird.“‘there are, it is true, two cy- 
lindrical tubes, but they gradually 
taper away toward the points, and 
instead of being pervious, form two 
sheaths for the two terminal parts 
or shafts of the glosso-hyal portion 
of the tongue, which run nearly to 
the tip.” (Aud. Birds of Amer., 
Vol. iv, p. 198). 
RIDGWAY. 
the humming-birds “The 
‘hai is slender and very exten- 
se like that of the woodpeckers. 
* * * * Instead, however, of 
its being as in the woodpeckers, 
solid and tipped with a barbed, 
horny point, it is hollow.” (The 
Humming-Birds, p. 290). 
These sentences, in either case, are completed by their respective 
authors in their calling attention to the bifurcated condition of the 
extremity of the tongue, and, as that is not the point in question, I 
purposely omitted it. 
arther on in his reply Mr. Ridgway remarks that his knowledge 
of the structure of the humming-birds is to some extent based upon 
the “later dissections of thirteen species,” made by Mr. F. A. Lucas, 
“instead of one, as in the case of Dr. Shufeldt’s ‘extensive dissec- 
tions.” If my friend will again allow me to invite his attention to 
the literature of the subject, I would call it to my memoir published in 
If Mr. Ridgway will permit one who has long been familiar with the “ee of 
“the Scotch anatomist,” I would “kindly invite” his attention to the fact that 
that careful dissector of birds spelled his name Macgillivray, and of jaiii 
as Mr. Ridgway always writes it.—R. W. S. 
