472 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



posed in a horizontal fork. It is a slight structure made of fine grasses, interspersed 

 more or less with the blossoms of trees, the whole disposed in a circular form, and 

 fitted between two twigs. The entire base of the nest is without support, and so thin 

 is the slight structure that the eggs might almost be seen from below." 



The pipras, or manakins, PIPEIDJE, like the foregoing family, have exaspidean 

 tarsi, but the outer and middle toes are connected for a distance of two joints, hence 

 the feet are syndactylous. Furthermore, they are heteromerous, as already men- 

 tioned. The pipras are mostly small birds, and nearly confined to South America, 

 only a few species being found in Central America and Mexico. The sexes are very 

 different in color, the females usually being dull greenish, while the males are mostly 

 very gorgeously colored, generally of a deep glossy black relieved by the most brilliant 

 scarlet, yellow, or sky-blue. Their figure is somewhat thick-set and the tail is generally 

 short and square, but forms are found with very extraordinary tail ornaments, and, on 

 the whole, the tail and wings seem to be the most variable parts, while the bill is of a 

 very uniform shape throughout the family, being short, somewhat vaulted, and broad 

 at base, the tip of the upper mandible being bent over the under one and notched behind 

 the point. 



The members of the genus Ileteropelm.a are somewhat different from the general 

 style of the pipras, being larger, and both sexes similarly dull colored. H. verce-pacis 

 is peculiar to Mexico and Central America. Among the more conspicuous forms may 

 be mentioned the Pipra filicauda from the Amazon, having the tail-feathers pro- 

 duced into long hair-like, but stiff, threads ; the exquisitely colored P. suavissima 

 from Demerara, of a deep velvety black, against which is set off in the strongest con- 

 trast imaginable the glossy sky-blue of the rump, the bright orange of the abdomen, 

 and the white forehead slightly tinged with beryl blue. The manakins proper, the typi- 

 cal species of which, Manacus manacus, is figured on the plate opposite this page, are 

 to be mentioned on account of the beard-like elongation of their chin-feathers, and the 

 attenuation and falcation of the primaries. The species figured is black, gray, and 

 white, exactly as shown in the drawing, the gray being a little more bluish ; and hails 

 from northern South America, while M. candei from Central America and Mexico has 

 the posterior half of the body beautifully tinged with yellow. In the members of the 

 genus Chiroxiphia we meet a different style of coloration, the back usually being 

 light blue, while the head is adorned with a crimson crown patch, the central tail- 

 feathers are often more or less lengthened, and the frontal and nasal feathers show a 

 tendency towards the velvety antrorse tufts, which reach their highest development 

 in Masius coronulatus and in Antilophia galeata, both velvety black, the former with 

 top of the head and the tuft yellow, the latter with the same parts, including the 

 upper neck and anterior back gloriously crimson scarlet. Most curious in form and 

 color, however, is the genus Machwropterus. The typical species are green with fiery 

 red crown, and the lower surface most curiously striped brown and whitish lengthwise. 

 The inner secondaries have the shafts thickened and hardened, ending in a pointed 

 claw, a structure carried out to an excessive degree in the more tmiformily chestnut- 

 colored M. deliciosa. Dr. Ph. L. Sclater, who originally described this species, gives 

 the following account of this odd structure of wing : " The ten primaries are of the 

 ordinary formation of birds of this family. The first three secondaries are thick- 

 stemmed, and curved towards the body at a distance of about two thirds of their 

 length from the base. The fourth and fifth show this structure to a greater degree, 

 with same corresponding alteration in the barb on each side, as may be seen from Fig. 



