Godin's Puffleg Eriocnemis godini Bourcier, 1851 [Alt. Turquoise-throated Puffleg]
Jean Louis Godin (1704–1760) was a French astronomer who worked in South America (1735). He was present in a minor role as a member of the French government-sponsored expedition to tropical America (1735–1738). After being with the expedition in Peru and Ecuador he was offered a post at Lima, Peru, as Professor of of Mathematics (1738–1751). He lost most of his money speculating and returned to Europe where he took the post of president of Cadiz midshipman's college. He was ennobled by the Spanish king for his work pertaining to the earthquake in Lisbon. Bourcier named two other hummingbirds after members of that expedition in the same paper that describes the puffleg. He was cousin to Jean Godin des Odonais (1712–1792), who was a French naturalist and professor in Quito, Ecuador, and married an heiress (1743) (q.v. Godin, I. above), resigned his chair and gave his time to natural science and Indian languages. Godin des Odonais explored in Ecuador and northern Peru, and collected a herbarium containing over 4,000 plant species. He also made drawings of c.800 species of animals. Later he spent 15 years exploring Cayenne and Brazilian Guiana, north of the Amazon. He donated his botanical collections to the MNHN, where they are still preserved. He published widely on both the plants and animals of northern South America, and also wrote dictionaries of South American languages. So it is possible that the bird is named after Godin des Odonais, but Jean Louis Godin is more likely. Only six specimens of this hummingbird are known, and it has not been recorded since the 19th century and a search (1980) for it was unsuccessful; it may be extinct.
