Note 117 — Family TROCHILIDÆ.—The Humming-Birds.

Selasphorus (rufus var. ?) scintilla (Gould). Selasphorus scintilla, Gould, P. Z. S. 1850, 162, Monog. Troch. III, pl. cxxxviii. The foregoing species are so similar in all essential respects to the northern S. platycercus and S. rufus, that it is exceedingly probable that they are merely the southern forms of those species. Both differ in exactly the same respects from their northern representatives, namely, in smaller size and less burnished throat, and to a very slight degree only in form. The only specimen of the S. flammula that we have examined is a badly shot male in Mr. Lawrence’s collection; what appears to be the outer primary in this specimen is not attenuated at the tip, which is curved inward, instead of acutely attenuated and turned outward as in platycercus; the wings are badly cut with shot, however, and the first primary may be wanting.