SOME OF THE OUTLIERS AMONG BIRDS. 



Ill 



gloomy caves to which it resorts, laying three or four white eggs 

 in a shallow clay nest. The young are overlaid with quantities 

 of fat, and are collected by the natives for the oil they afford 

 therefrom. This is an extensive and interesting industry, upon 

 which much has been written.* 



We have now passed into an extensive group of birds gen- 

 erally alluded to by ornithologists as the "picarian assemblage," 

 that not only includes the goatsuckers, of which we have just 

 been speaking, but also many other families.! Some of the rela- 

 tionships of the representatives of these groups are by no means 

 as yet understood fully ; many of them are interrelated ; others 

 exhibit characters which link them with another great assemblage 

 of birds that is, the 'passerine group, or the Passer es. This is 

 the case with the woodpeckers, for example, and also with the 

 swifts, which latter are related to the swallows {Hirundinidce). 

 All this with equal 

 truth applies to the 

 Passeres, of which we 

 have just spoken, and 

 to which the swallows 

 belong. Quite a num- 

 ber of the families 

 among the passerine 

 birds, however, have 

 been very carefully 

 examined, and orni- 

 thologists the world 

 over are agreed as to 

 their affinities, while 

 on the other hand we 



are at our wits' end in regard to the determination of the allies 

 of some of the passerine outliers. A few of the more puzzling 

 forms of these can now be briefly introduced. The little " Ameri- 

 can dipper" (Cinclus) of the Rocky Mountain region is one of 

 these, a bird not much larger than a bluebird, which is completely 

 aquatic, even to the extent of hunting for its food under water. J 



Fig. 9. 



-The Hdia {Heteralocha). Upper figure, female; 

 lower, male. Shut'eldt, after Newton. 



* As a type this form is the sole representative of a distinct family the Sfeatornithidte. 



f As, for example, the cuckoos (Coccyges), the rollers {Coracice), the kingfishers {Alccd- 

 ines), the hornbills [Bucerotcx), the todies (lodi), the trogons (Trogones), the swifts {Cyp- 

 seli), the woodpeckers (Pici), the bee-eaters {Meropes), the hummingbirds {Trochili), the 

 raotmots (Momoti), and hosts of others and all their various allies. 



\ Cinclus has by some been placed with the thrushes [Ti(rJidie), by others with the 

 wrens ( Troglodyt'uke), while the present writer, after examining it osteologically, believes it 

 to be related to the genus Siurus. Several of this last-named genus are " water thrushes," 

 and the ovenbird (iS'. aiirocapilbt.s) at least builds a covered nest with a side entrance, as 

 does the dipper ( Cinclus). 

 VOL. XLVI. 58 



