that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 457 



greater portion of the present family. A group of these, repre- 

 sented by the Pictis mimitus, 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 Yunx, Linn., appears 

 to be associated. The strong afiinity between this family and the 

 succeeding group of Certhiada, 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 Certhia, — 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; others t 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 Certhia. 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- 

 naeus 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. PI. Enl. 605io''' 7;=>/0fnH!l'> "'h'oiifj 



f D.scaridens. PI. Enl. 621. 



% D.procurvus. Teinm. PI. Col. 28. 



§ This group forms the genus Colapfes of Mr. Swainson. 



other 



