SUGAR-BIRD, the English name commonly given in the West India Islands to the various members of the genus Certhiola (generally regarded as belonging to the Family Coerebidae ) from their habit of frequenting the curing-houses where sugar is kept, apparently attracted thither by the swarms of flies. These little birds on account of their pretty plumage and their familiarity are usually favourites. They often come into dwelling-houses, where they preserve great coolness, hopping gravely from one piece of furniture to another and carefully exploring the surrounding objects with intent to find a spider or insect. In their figure and motions they remind a northern naturalist of a Nuthatch, while their coloration—black, yellow, olive, grey, and white—recalls to him a Titmouse. They generally keep in pairs and build a domed but untidy nest, laying therein three eggs, white blotched with rusty-red. Apart from all this the genus presents some points of great interest. Mr Sclater (Cat. Β. Br. Museum, xi. pp. 36-47) recognizes 18 “species,” therein following Mr Ridgway (Proc. U.S. Nat. Museum, 1885, pp. 25-30), of which 3 are continental with a joint range extending from southern Mexico to Peru, Bolivia, and south-eastern Brazil, while the remaining 15 are peculiar to certain of the Antilles, and several of them to one island only. Thus C. caboti is limited, so far as is known, to Cozumel (off Yucatan), C. tricolor to Old Providence, C. flaveola (the type of the genus) to Jamaica, and so on, while islands that are in sight of one another are often inhabited by different “species.” Further research is required; but even now the genus furnishes an excellent example of the effects of isolation in breaking up an original form, while there is comparatively little ...