146 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 
but whether the direct passage is made by the short- 
billed honeysuckers (Diceum Cuv.), or by the spider- 
suckers (Arachnothera Tern.), is uncertain. The plu- 
mage of the meliphagous birds of New Holland is 
almost universally dull, or at least destitute of those 
gay and beautiful tints which are so strikingly developed 
in the sunbirds: a rich golden green, varied on the 
under parts with steel-blue, purple, bright orange, dr 
vivid crimson, decorates nearly all the species, and pro- 
duces a brilliancy of colours only rivalled by diose of the 
humming-birds. The bill is very long, slender, and 
acutely pointed, the margins being dentated in the 
most regular and delicate manner ; yet these teeth are 
so small as scarcely to be seen by the naked eye : the 
tongue is formed into a bifid tube, or rather, as 
we suspect, into two flattened filaments ; thus differ- 
ing materially from that of the honeysuckers, which 
always ends in a brush : the bill also is never notched. 
The difference between the two structures is softened 
down by the intervention of the nectar-birds (Aec- 
tarinia lU.), whose bill shows a union of both charac- 
ters, — the margins being finely dentated, and the tip 
distinctly notched. The species of the latter are few ; 
and while Cinnyris is restricted to the tropics of the 
Old World, Nectarmitt represents them in the New. 
Some few other forms, found in Australia and in the 
Oceanic Islands, belong to this group, and they are 
arranged in the genera Metithreptes and Diceum, but 
their habits are imperfectly understood. 
(165.) In the Tbochilidie, or humming-birds, we 
have the full developeraent of the suctorial perfection 
belonging to this tribe. The bill, from its soft and deli- 
cate structure, appears adapted for no other purpose than 
to protect a long bifid and flattened tongue*, darted by 
these little creatures into the nectary of flowers, for the 
purpose of licking the honey : but, like the rest of this 
tribe, the humming-birds are partly insectivorous ; a 
• The tongue of the humming-birds has always been deseribod as iuhu> 
tar i but in all that I have examined, the two tilaments are perfectly flat. 
