‘ CROTOPHAGA. 547 
architect’s peculiarities was shown. A hole had been left in the centre of the nest 
and only recently filled with leaves, whose fresh green colour testified that they had 
been cut and placed there later than the others forming the carpeting of the bottom of 
this common incubator. The eggs were all fresh, the six occupying the nest having 
the rough white calcareous surface perfectly clean and without the slightest variation 
in colour: not so the eggs found about the outside of the nest. ‘Those found in 
contact with the leaves had taken on a dirty yellowish tinge. Those held suspended 
among the leaves and thorns showed various spots and lines of the lustrous blue 
colour forming the base for the chalky external coat.” In form the eggs vary in shape 
from an oval to an elliptical oval, and differ greatly in size. 
Fam. CAPITONIDZ. 
The family Capitonide contains, so far as we know at present, about 118 species, which 
are divided into nineteen genera. Of these all but seventeen species of two genera 
belong to the Old World, and are distributed over the tropical portions of Africa and 
Asia as far as China, the Philippine Islands, and in the south-east to Borneo and Java. 
The family is unrepresented in Celebes and the whole of the New Guinea region, 
Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Nor is it found in any portion of 
the Palearctic region, nor in America north of Costa Rica. 
The Neotropical members of the family, seventeen in all, belong to the genera 
Capito (15) and Tetragonops (2). Capito is distributed over the northern portion of 
the continent of South America from the valley of the Amazons to the north coast and 
along the Isthmus as far as Costa Rica, but no further. astern Peru and Ecuador 
seem to be the metropolis of the family, as nine species of Capito and one Tetragonops 
occur on the eastern slopes of the Andes and the upper waters of the Amazons. 
In Central America we find two species of Capito and one Tetragonops, but none 
occur beyond the mountains of Costa Rica. 
As to the position of the Capitonide in the “Systema Avium,” it is now generally 
agreed that the Rhamphastide is the nearest allied family, the Indicatoride not far 
removed. Garrod and Forbes always placed these families close to the Picide and 
away from the Cuculide, considering that the great similarity of the body anatomy 
overruled the differences plainly observable in the structure of the head. 
The two chief recent authorities on the Capitonide are the Messrs. Marshall, who 
completed an illustrated Monograph of it in 1871, and Capt. Shelley, who wrote the 
catalogue of these birds in the British Museum (1891). 
The arrangement of the genera Capito and Tetragonops differs in these two works: in 
the former Tetragonops is placed with the other dentate forms with the African Pogono- 
‘rhynchus in the Pogonorhynchine, whilst Capito finds a place with the smooth-billed 
69* 
