No. 3.] POSITION OF CHAMAA. 483 
that the median band is much broader. And I wish it to be 
understood that in both species scattered feathers are to be 
found interspersed among the three longitudinal bands which I 
have attempted to describe. This condition is also pretty well 
seen in Cham@a. There is but one other species we will exam- 
ine just at present, so far as its topographical anatomy goes ; 
and I propose to allow Sa/pinctes obsoletus to represent the 
Wrens, it being a good-sized Western form. In it we find a 
pterylography which approaches Certhza more nearly than any 
other species we have investigated, while in the form of its 
plucked body, it widely departs from Chamea, as its head is 
conspicuously large for its size; the neck rather long; the body 
or trunk very wide and compressed dorso-ventrally ; the pectoral 
limbs long and powerfully developed ; and finally, the pelvic 
extremities relatively short, and not especially strong. Chamcea 
Jasciata has very little affinity with this bird, so far as is indi- 
cated by external features and characters; and these are as 
much a part of its anatomy as are brain, viscera, or skull. The 
form of the plucked body in Salpznctes obsoletus is substantially 
repeated in Campylorhynchus brunnetcapillus. 
To sum up a little, then, as far as we have gone, and spread- 
ing out before us all our specimens of plucked birds now under 
consideration, carefully reweighing everything that has been set 
forth in the foregoing paragraphs, —then by a system of elim- 
ination, putting first aside the species having the greatest num- 
ber of different characters, then the next one most evidently 
unlike our Chamca, we find at last that we are compelled to 
decide in favor of a Psaltriparus as having the majority of 
characters in its external parts that approach the subject of our 
present memotr. 
Turning for the moment to such foreign forms as 4/gzthaliscus 
erythrocephalus, Parus nepalensts, and Parus xanthogenys from 
the northwestern Himalayas, we find some interesting compara- 
tive points in them; for in the first-named species the general 
form of the plucked bird quite nearly resembles Chamea and the 
Bush-Tits of the genus Psa/triparus, in that its pterylography 
is very much the same; while the shape of the head, the shortish 
neck, and the lengthening of the pelvic limbs, though the latter 
is not so striking, all point toa parine structure, which approaches 
our Wren-Tit. 
