INTRODUCTION. 
159 
favourite food. Some of the Protean are remarkable 
for the quantity of juice afforded by them ; from 
one, provincially called the sugar-tree, the juice is 
collected from the bottom of the flowers, and is 
sometimes boiled down to a thick syrup for the 
purpose of preserving fruits. Vast numbers perch 
themselves on the edge of the corollas, for the pur- 
pose of collecting the sweet juice ; and one species, 
from its song, is often kept in cages, where it is 
maintained, “ with difficulty, on sugar and water.”* 
This would seem to show that these juices cannot 
alone afford them support. Sloane represents the 
American Correia ccerulea as feeding on the fruit of 
the sugar-cane, t 
Among the Sun-birds, which also are constantly 
plunging their bill into flowers, we have no doubt 
that dissection will exhibit insects also, and in a 
greater proportion, according as we find the struc- 
ture most developed. In most other forms of the 
family we find the bill much stronger, and the edges 
either rugged or very irregularly toothed ; but in 
Melithreptus we have that member stronger still, and 
entirely unbroken on the edges, running smoothly 
to a sharp tip. This we would also consider in a 
great measure as insectivorous ; and we have seve- 
ral instances among tenuirostral birds, whose curved 
attenuated bill is a very successful instrument in 
searching out minute insects. The various Dendro- 
colapti show a most remarkable curvature, which 
* Barrow, Travels in South Africa, p. 62. 
t Latham, quoted from. 
