HONEY-EATERS AND NECTAR BIRDS. 
13 
red. The throat of the male is black. It does not 
creep up the walls like its congeners, but flits from 
point to point, taking a firm hold in an upright posi- 
tion, and searching around for its food with a scru- 
tinising eye. The tail-feathers, not being used like 
those of a true Creeper as a support to the body, are 
not worn at their points or edges. The nest is made 
in clefts of inaccessible rocks and crevices of lofty 
ruins. It is a native of southern Europe. 
Here we close the scansorial tribe of birds. 
f ontjT-tattw anit Utrtar §wl)S. 
TENUIROSTRES. 
The tribe to which we now direct our attention will 
not yield to any of the others in interest or beauty. 
It contains some birds of the most splendid plumage, 
as well as the most diminutive in the whole class. 
The great majority subsist upon insects, which it is 
believed they suck up, by means of a filamentous 
tongue, from the nectar of flowers, and on this 
account they are sometimes called suctorial birds, or 
Honey-suckers. In the slender proportion of the bill, 
the shortness of the feet, and the extensile property 
of the tongue, they bear some resemblance to the 
scansorial Creepers. The tongue is long, always re- 
tractile, and instead of being pointed, like that of the 
scansorial insect-feeding bird, is either simply forked 
