No. 3.] ' POSITION OF CHAMEA. soI 
of man to detect them, much less accurately state from whence 
they were derived. Then again, other characters present them- 
selves which almost stand boldly out in their significance, and 
point but in one direction to the kindred stock responsible for 
them. Who is the one among us who can truly tell just exactly 
how much of S¢eatornts is Owl, or how much typical picine 
stock there is in Yusr? And such problems are even still 
harder to solve where the affines are thickly clustered, and such 
are the difficulties we meet with when one attempts to unravel 
the ancestry of such a species as Chamea fasciata. 
Apart from its larger size, there is no question, after we have 
stripped specimens of all our United States Wrens and Titmice 
of their feathers, but that the general form of a Chamea is more 
like a Bush-Tit (Psaltriparus) than it is like any of the rest of 
them, and this resemblance is real. Not to pass beyond the 
avifauna of this country then, we have shown in the text how 
this resemblance is again supported by the anatomy of the “soft 
parts,’— greater preponderance of characters of these birds 
being found in Chamea over its troglydytine ones. Coming to 
the skeleton, a part of the organization from which we have the 
right to draw upon for our conclusions, it being one of the most 
reliable systems, and one which long retains the indices of a 
vertebrate’s affinities, we see, at least, something to assist us in 
pronouncing upon the kinship of Chamea. 
Surely no one could be made to believe that Chama@a bears 
any close osteological resemblance to such a form as Catherpes 
m. conspersus. The short-faced, semi-rotund skull of the former, 
with its maxillo-palatines having their free mesial ends large, 
thin, flat, and sguarish; with its palatines having rounded pos- 
terior-external angles, and with a differently formed vomer and 
mandible ; — certainly all this is quite at variance with the long- 
faced, strikingly flattened skull of the latter, with its maxillo- 
palatines having their free mesial ends zarrow, thin, and 
posteriorly produced; with its palatines having their postero- 
external angles produced and angular; and finally, with the 
differences in the vomer and mandible spoken of in the text of 
this monograph. These cranial differences, as we now know, 
are also supported by others in the trunk skeleton in the two 
species in question. Withdrawing, then, such a formas Catherpes 
m. conspersus, we find it followed by its evident allies in our 
