The Trochilidae, although confined to one continent, promise to exceed
all other families--even the cosmopolitan finches and warblers--in
number of species. At present over five hundred are known, or as many as
all the species of birds in Europe together; and good reasons exist for
believing that very many more--not less perhaps than one or two hundred
species--yet remain to be discovered. The most prolific region, and
where humming-birds are most highly developed, is known to be West
Brazil and the eastern slopes of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. This
is precisely the least known portion of South America; the few
naturalists and collectors who have reached it have returned laden with
spoil, to tell us of a region surpassing all others in the
superabundance and beauty of its bird life. Nothing, however, which can
be said concerning these vast unexplored areas of tropical mountain and
forest so forcibly impresses us with the idea of the unknown riches
contained in them as the story of the Loddigesia mirabilis. This is
perhaps the most wonderful humming-bird known, and no one who had not
previously seen it figured could possibly form an idea of what it is
like from a mere description. An outline sketch of it would probably be
taken by most people as a fantastic design representing a bird-form in
combination with leaves, in size and shape resembling poplar leaves, but
on leaf-stalks of an impossible length, curving and crossing each other
so as to form geometrical figures unlike anything in nature. Yet this
bird (a single specimen) was obtained in Peru half a century ago, and
for upwards of twenty years after its discovery Gould tried to obtain
others, offering as much as fifty pounds for one; but no second specimen
ever gladdened his eyes, nor was anything more heard of it until
Stolzmann refound it in the year 1880.

The addition of many new species to the long list would, however, be a
matter of small interest, unless fresh facts concerning their habits and