that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 457 
greater portion of the present family. A group of these, repre- 
sented by the Picus minutus, Linn., in which the shafts of the tail- 
feathers are soft and flexible, unlike those of the genuine Wood- — 
peckers, leads round again to the Barbets, where the family com- 
mences. To these also the well-known genus Yuna, Linn., appears 
to be associated. The strong affinity between this family and the 
. succeeding group of Certhiade, in their general habits of climb- 
ing, and of feeding by their extensile tongue, needs no illustra- 
tion. In less important points they equally pass into each 
other. The difference in the form of the typical bill of Picus, 
and that of the true Certhie,-—the one straight and powerful, the 
other curved and slender,—is softened down by the intervention 
of the genus Dendrocolaptes, Herm. ; which, as it stands at pre- 
sent, includes some groups* where the bill is as strong and as 
straight as in Picus; otherst where the bill, still retaining its 
strength, becomes gradually curved; and others, where the 
same member, still further deviating from the type of the genus 
to which it belongs, assumes the full curve and slenderness of the 
bill of the typical Certhie. The former group, or the Linnean 
Pici, it may be again observed, includes some species where the 
bill loses the straight and angulated form, and becomes curved 
and compressed. ‘These birds, of which the Picus auratus of Lin- 
neus is the representative§, exhibit in this particular an evident 
approximation to the true Creepers; while these latter birds, 
on the other hand, evince an equal contiguity to the former, 
in some of the aberrant groups of the family, which retain the 
stiff shafts of the tail-feathers, so conspicuous in the true Pici. 
The gradual manner in which the two groups pass into each 
* Dendrocolaptes Picus. Pl. Enl. 605. 
+ D.scandens. Pl. Ent: 621. ; 
t D.procurvus. "Temm. PI. Col. 28. 
§ This group forms the genus Colaptes of Mr. Swainson. 
other 
