184 DENDROCOLAPTID. 
of Poctum, San Gerénimo (0. 8S. & F. D. G.®), Cahabon (f. Sarg °); Costa Rica, 
Naranjo (Zeledon }*). 
A species sparingly distributed over a wide area extending from Southern Mexico to 
Costa Rica, and rather variable in the markings of its plumage, which has led to the 
separation of the Mexican from the Guatemalan bird and the Costa-Rican from both. 
The chief point relied upon is the presence or absence of dark transverse marks on 
the abdomen, the Mexican birds having, as a rule, these marks more clearly shown than 
in others from more southern localities. The type from Guatemala is destitute of 
these marks, but other specimens from the same country have them in varying degrees, 
and it seems to us impossible from the series before us to separate these birds on so 
slender and variable a character. Mr. Ridgway, however, strongly insists upon the 
distinctness of X. sclateri from X. emigrans, and we can only conclude that the speci- 
mens seen by him tell him a different story from ours. As for the Costa Rica bird, we 
can give no independent opinion, as we doubt the origin of a specimen in the British 
Museum said to be from that country, but which belongs, we think, to one of the 
South-American forms and not to X. emigrans at all. 
Mr. Ridgway only makes a subspecific form of the Costa Rica bird, and gives as 
its difference from .Y. emigrans its slightly larger size and broader streaks on the 
breast &c. 
X. emigrans is an inhabitant of the pine-districts where it is found. It is a shy bird 
and difficult of approach. A specimen shot in the Pine-ridge of Poctum flew from tree 
to tree, and after alighting on the trunk it rapidly ascended to the top, from whence it 
flew to another tree. ‘The range in altitude of the species extends from about 800 to 
1200 feet in British Honduras to at least 8000 feet in the mountains of Mexico. 
Sumichrast speaks of the species as inhabiting the pine-forests of the highlands of 
Orizaba, where it was not uncommon, taking its food from the bark of the tree-trunks. 
In the stomach of a bird he shot he found a tree-frog (Hyla myotympanum), which 
had probably been captured among the tufts of an <Achmea (Bromeliacee), to which 
these batrachians resort during the dry season. 
PICOLAPTES. 
Picolaptes, Lesson, Traité d’Orn. p. 313 (1831); Scl. Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xv. p. 146. 
This genus contains the weaker forms of Dendrocolaptine allied to Dendrornis and 
Xiphocolaptes. The bill especially is more slender and feeble, as well as more curved, than 
in either of the above-named genera. In all other points of structure Picolaptes shows no 
essential difference. In the number of its component species it fully equals Dendrornis, 
Mr. Sclater reckoning them at seventeen, and giving the names of two others unknown 
to him. These are widely distributed from Central Mexico in the north to Paraguay 
and South Brazil. Four species, all peculiar to it, are found within our country; of 
