_Trochilus Alexandri_ (Black-throated Hummingbird).—Male: tails lightly forked, the chin and upper part of the throat velvety black without metallic reflections, which are confined to the posterior border of the black, and are violet, changing to steel-blue. Length, 3·30 inches. Female, without the metallic markings; tail-feathers tipped with white. Both have the same northern and southern range as _Selasphorus rufus_. _Urotrichus Gibsii_, Baird (Western slope of Cascade Mountains); _Urotrichus Talpoides_, Temminck.—This singular little animal, that appears to be an intermediate link between the shrew and the mole, at present is only known as an inhabitant of two parts of the world, widely removed from each other—the one spot being the western slope of the Cascade Mountains, in North-west America, the other Japan. There are, as far as I know, but two specimens extant from the Cascade Mountains—one in the Smithsonian Museum at Washington, the other a very fine specimen that I have recently brought home, and now in the British Museum.[7] I have carefully compared the Japanese gentleman with his brother from the Western wilds, and can find no difference whatever, either generically or specifically. In size, colour, shape, and anatomical structure they are precisely alike. The habits of the little fellow from Japan I know nothing about, but with my friend from the North-west I am much more familiar; and I shall endeavour to introduce him to you as lifelike as I can, from what I have jotted down in my notebook. First, then, the Urotrichus is an insectivorous mammal, its size that of a large shrew, about two-and-a-quarter inches in length, exclusive of tail, which is about an inch and a half. This tail is covered thickly with long hairs, which at the tip end in a tuft like a fine camel’s-hair pencil, and from this hairy tail it gets the name, _Urotrichus_. [Illustration: THE UROTRICHUS (Urotrichus Gibsii).] Its colour is bluish-black when alive, but in the dried specimens changes to sooty-brown. The hair is lustrous, and, where it reflects the light, has a hoary appearance, and, as with the mole, it can be smoothed in either direction; this is a wise and admirable arrangement, as it enables the animal to back through its underground roads, as well as to go through them head-first. Its nose or snout is very curious, and much like that of a pig—only that it is lengthened out into a cylindrical tube, covered with short thick hairs, and terminated in a naked fleshy kind of bulb or gland; and this gland is pierced by two minute holes, which are the nostrils. Each nostril has a little fold of membrane hanging down over it like a shutter, effectually preventing sand and minute particles of dust from getting into the nose whilst digging.