No. I.] NORTH AMERICAN PASSERES. 95 
Creepers ; they undoubtedly are entitled to family rank, but I 
would prefer to devote further research to more extensive 
material before advancing final opinions upon their definite 
affinities. In my Chamea paper I give a lateral view of the 
skull of C. fi americana, a species which perhaps has a trace of 
the Wren in it. 
In the same paper I presented the skeletal characters of a 
number of Wrens and their allies (Family TZvoglodytide, see 
Fig. 12), and so will have little or nothing to add about them 
here. I have examined and carefully compared skeletons of 
Mimus, Oroscoptes, Harporhynchus, and a number of the true 
Troglodytine, and am satisfied that the Mzmzn@ are aberrant 
thrushes, linked with the true 7urdid@ and the Wrens, through 
such a genus perhaps as Campylorhynchus, though Ovoscoptes 
has a skeleton that would pass without any difficulty whatever 
for that of a true turdine type. In my paper on Czuclus in the 
Nuttall Bulletin, quoted above, I gave an upper view of the 
skull of this bird, and one may easily see that I am justified in 
making this remark. J7Zzmus has a skeleton quite like Ovoscoptes, 
and fully as Thrush-like. In Harporhnychus a decided departure 
is met with, and the skeletons in some of those species are like 
skeletons of great overgrown Wrens. They have a peculiar 
pattern of pelvis, however, essentially their own, which is due 
to a sharpness of its principal borders and angles, and a certain 
amount of prominence to its most salient processes. 
Still adhering to the plan adopted in the A. O. U. Check- 
List, the next family we come to is the Czzc/zd@, containing the 
single species Czuclus mexicanus, our American Dipper, and of 
it I said in my paper on its osteology (Bull. Nutt. Ornith. Club, 
1882), that it is quite closely related to the genus Sczuvus, and 
not far removed from some of the Wrens; while Coues has re- 
marked that this is a “small but remarkable group, in which the 
characters shared by the 7urding, Saxicoline, and Sylviine, are 
modified in adaptation to the singular aquatic life the species 
lead.” (Key, 2d ed., p. 255.) Now, I have all my old material 
before me upon which my conclusions were based as given 
above, and a great deal more besides. I can see in C7uclus 
where I saw the Wren in its skeleton, for in its skull there is 
that evident resemblance to the turdo-troglodytine stock, while 
other points clearly show its affinity with the Water Thrushes 
