312 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



The Capitonidse are forest birds, living mostly among the tree tops, 

 where they feed on fruits, berries, and insects and, some species at 

 least, nest in holes in trees and lay pure white eggs. Some kinds are 

 said to run up and down trunks of trees, though in a different manner 

 from the Woodpeckers. 



As a rule, they are birds of beautiful, or at least gaudy, plumage, 

 the coloration consisting of strongly (but not always harmoniously) 

 contrasting areas of several of the spectrum hues (blue, green, 

 yellow, orange, and red), usually with more or less of black. Often 

 the two sexes, while equally bright or showy in coloration, are yet so 

 different in their colors as to have often been described as distinct 

 species. 



Unlike the Toucans, the Barbets are not confined to the American 

 Tropics. In fact, they are poorly represented there, being far more 

 numerous in tropical Asia and Africa. In America only four 

 genera, with about eighteen species, are known to occur, about seven 

 tunes as many genera and nearly seven times as many species being 

 found in the Eastern Hemisphere." 



"They are birds mostly of a bright green plumage, some of them 

 variegated, especially on the head, with scarlet, violet, blue, or yel- 

 low, though others are plainly colored. All of them seem to live 

 chiefly on fruit, but insects occasionally form part of their food, and 

 in captivity they become carnivorous. They breed in holes of trees, 

 laying white eggs, and most, if not all, of them utter a clear ringing 

 note so loud as to attract general attention." (Newton, Dictionary 

 of Bhds, Part I, p. 28.) 



"Although the limits of this family appear to be well defined, the 

 characters used for the separation of genera are by no means easy to 

 distinguish, and in any case they are difficult to formulate. The 

 Capitonidx appear to me to constitute a family of Picarian birds in 

 which no single character for the separation of genera can be con- 

 sidered to be absolute, and even style of coloration is of no avail as 

 a generic character. As a rule, the plumage is gaudy and the con- 

 trasts striking ; but there are some genera, such as Cdlorhamiithus and 

 Gymnohucco, which it would be difficult to match for dullness of 

 coloration. Scarcely one of the genera admitted here is so well 

 defined that it does not form a Imk toward some other genus, and 

 PogonorJiynchus and its allies may well be considered as subgenera 



oln Sharpe's "Hand-list of the Genera and Species of Birds," ii, 1900, 177-187, 

 nineteen genera and one hundred and twenty-two species of Capitonidae are listed as 

 peculiar to the Old World. Of these, eleven genera and eighty-two species are found 

 in Africa only, while eight genera and forty species occur only in southern Asia and 

 the Indo-Malayan region. 



