Notices of New Books. 



8549 



moderately long snout curved downwards, and extremely small eyes. 

 It remained nearly all the time without motion, except when irritated, 

 in which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair 

 to which it clung, and clawed out with its fore paws like a cat. Its 

 manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, 

 gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and 

 remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. 

 The next day I put it on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. 

 These small Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on 

 those species of Termites which construct earthy nests, that look like 

 ugly excrescences on the trunks and branches of trees. The different 

 kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to various modes of lite, terrestrial 

 and arboreal. Those which live on trees are again either diurnal or 

 nocturnal, for Myrmecophaga tetradactyla is seen moving along the 

 main branches in the day-time." — (P. 178). 



But I must hurry on to the humming birds, and then as rapidly as 

 possible close my remarks and extracts, which I feel it extremely diffi- 

 cult to compress into a single number of the ' Zoologist.' In a book 

 like that before me there is such a redundance of quotable passages 

 that I feel overpowered by the very excess. In returning to the 

 delightful subject of humming birds I must not omit to express my 

 obligation to Mr. Wallace for his valuable paper in the April number 

 (Zool. 8486) on the " Humming Bird's Relations." At the same time 

 it would be uncandid in me to abandon the position I had taken 

 up with respect to the near relationship between the hummers and the 

 sun-birds, a relationship supported, as it appears to me, by the only 

 unpublished character Mr. Wallace has adduced, the tubular structure 

 of the tongue of the sun-birds. The growth of the beak in birds, allu- 

 ded to by Mr. Wallace in the case of the hummers, is a subject very 

 familiar to me : I may mention the curlew as a striking but not singular 

 instance, though it proves literally nothing. 



Humming Birds. — " In January the orange trees became covered 

 with blossom, — at least to a greater extent than usual, for they flower 

 more or less in this country all the year round, — and the flowers 

 attracted a great number of humming birds. Every day, in the cooler 

 hours of the morning, and in the evening from four o'clock till six, 

 they were to be seen whirring about the trees by scores. Their motions 

 are unlike those of all other birds. They dart to and fro so swiftly 

 that the eye can scarcely follow them, and when they stop before a 

 flower it is only for a few moments. They poise themselves in an 

 unsteady maimer, their wings moving with inconceivable rapidity, 



