Birds of Celebes; Dicaeidae. 
443 
of Manado where Meyer met with it from January to July, and the hills be- 
hind, where it was found hy Dr. Guillem ard at Tondano and Tomohon, over 
2000 feet, and by Dr. Platen at llurukan, over 3000 feet, and later in the 
same neighbourhood by the Sarasins. In the south it is known from the coast 
at Macassar up to 4000 ft. on Mt. Bonthain (Sarasins). 
The members of the genus Dicaeum, as Oates writes (Faun. Brit. Ind. Birds 
n, 375), “frequent trees, generally at a considerable height above the ground, 
and feed both on insects and small berries. Their nests are beautiful structures 
made of the finest and most delicate materials, egg-shaped, and suspended from 
the tip of a branch”. The genus is a large one; in 1885 (Cat. B. X, 10 — 48) 
Dr. Sharpe described 47 species which range from India and South China 
throughout the East Indies to Australia and Tasmania, and a number of new 
species have since been found in the East Indies, where the list is still, appa- 
rently, far from complete. Dr. Sharpe enumerates 9 species from the Asiatic 
continent and islands off the coast, 10 — three of them found also on the 
continent — from the Great and Lesser Sunda Islands, not counting the Celebes 
Province where seven species are now (Nov. 1897) known, 10 from the Philip- 
pines, 4 from the Moluccas, 14 from the Papuan Islands, and only one from 
Australia and Tasmania. Thus, Australia is rendered highly improbable as the 
land of origin of the genus. As a rule, few forms are found in one and the 
same locality, seven recorded by Oates from British India, five by Everett 
from Borneo, and five by Salvadori from New Guinea being the maximum 
numbers. The species inhabiting -the Philippines, now numbering with Sooloo 
13, are mostly insular forms. It is very difficult to form an opinion as to their 
value in determining former geographical conditions; minute stationary birds 
like these have often such very restricted ranges that one is almost tempted to 
say that the smaller the bird the narrower its range, and that if these species 
are to be taken as a criterion for the former disposition of land and water in 
the East Indies, then many bigger, wider-ranging birds cannot be taken into 
account and must be held to have spread their range by fiight; in point of 
fact, however, many large birds are more local than these species of Dicaeum, 
some of which are of wider range , two following the familiar rule of having 
Borneo, Sumatra and S. E. Asia for their habitat. 
* 171. DICAEUM SULAENSE Sharpe. 
Sula Bed-throated Flower-pecker. 
a. Dicaeum eelebicum partim (1) Wall., P. Z. S. 1862, 342 (Sula); (2) Finsch, Neu Gruinea 
1865, 163 (Sula); (3) Wald., Tr. Z. S. 1872, Vm, 72 (Sula). 
Dicaeum sulaense (1) Sharpe, P. Z. S. 1883, 579; (2) id.. Oat. B. X, 1885, 24; (3) W. Bias., 
Ztschr. ges. Orn. 1885, 292; (4) Eclinw. & Schalow, J. f. O. 1886, 437; (5) Sharpe, 
Ihis 1889, 428; (6) M. & Wg., Ahh. Mus. Dresd. 1896, Nr. 2, p. 10. 
„Tomosi caposes”, Banggai Id., Nat. Coll. 
56 * 
