INTRODUCTION. 
J 49 
in the first being the one peculiarly taken up by 
the Meliphagidse or Honey-suckers, in the latter 
by numerous and abundant species of Humming- 
birds. 
When we commenced to work at the present 
Volume, we had intended to include the whole 
groups of the family, giving a general survey of the 
forms, and illustrating them by figures of the more 
typical examples only ; upon entering on the sub- 
ject, however, we found that there were ample 
materials to furnish sixty or seventy interesting 
illustrations, instead of about thirty, to which in 
the other case we should have had to restrict the 
whole ; and on this account we have decided to 
confine it to the typical form alone, or the genus 
Nectarinia* of Illiger, by which we shall be enabled 
to give nearly a monograph of the species, with 
figures of a largo proportion of them. The remain- 
ing forms may be hereafter again taken up and 
illustrated ; nevertheless, some general observations 
may be now required. 
The Humming-birds, or family of the Trocliilid*, 
although they want the wide gape and other acces- 
saries around the moutli provisional for capturing 
insects in flight, in form most, closely resemble the 
fissirostral genera, being deficient in the members 
particularly adapted for perching, while they pos- 
sess an extraordinary development of those proper 
for flight. The want of adaptation, however, in 
* Nectarinia was applied by Illiger in 1811 ; Cinnyris, by 
Cuvier, in 1816 or 1817. 
