478 NATUnAI. lllSTOItY OF BIllDS. 



own ubiquity- He says: "In the Miorniiig, and shortly before sunset, may be lieard 

 a nielaiK'iioly cry, as tliis ant-thrusli creeps amongst the brushwood. Many times have 

 I followed, to obtain a specimen, and, after a tough scramble of an hour, given it up 

 for a bad job. At one time you seem to stand right upon it, and a moment after you 

 hear it four yards off; again you reach the spot, and you hear it twenty yards behind 

 you ; you return, tlieu it is to the right ; soon after, you hear it on the left. At fii-st 

 you imagine the bird Las the j)ower of a ventriloquist ; but, by dint of patience and 

 watching, you m.iy see it creeping swiftly and silently among the grass and brush- 

 wood in places where it has to ]>ass a rather more open spot, and the mystery is 

 e.x])Iained. The nest is also difficult to obtain ; it is jdaced at some height from the 

 ground, and made of a mass of roots, dead leaves, and moss, lined with roots and 

 fibres. The eggs are two in number, rather round and blue." 



In now turning to the last two families of the jiresent super-family, which are <lis- 

 tinguished from the rest by having endaspidean tarsi, we have to remind the reader of 

 an osteological character, of which we heard con>iderable during the earlier jiart of this 

 volume. It will be remembered that several 'swinuners' and ' waders' distinguished 

 themselves from others of these antiquated 'orders,' and from most other birds, by 

 being schizorhinal, that is, by having the posterior angle of the external narcs ]passing 

 behind, instead of in front of, the ends of the nasal jtrocesses of the prwmaxilhc, all 

 other birds being holorhinai. Picarians and Passeres were, therefore, all considered 

 holorhinal until Garrod, in 1877, demonstrated that certain tracheophone Passeres, 

 regarded as belonging to the family Uendrocolaptidie, are schizorhinal, like the plovers 

 and gulls. Curiously enough, this sjiecializatiou, which is (|uite unique in the order, 

 is combined with slender maxillo-palatines, curved backwards, as in the Oscines, a fea- 

 ture only found elsewhere in the Pteroptochida; among mesomyodian Passeres. The 

 significance of these structures is not quite clear yet, but it is safe to assume that the 

 schizorhinal P'orniicarioidea; form a very natural group, since it is very inqirobable 

 that such a unique development should have started independently in two or more 

 forms. We therefore accept it as indicating family relations, following Garrod's 

 proposition in dividing the endas]>idean Formicarioideaj in the holorhinal Dendroco- 

 laj)tidie and the schizorhinal Kurnariidic. 



The DENiiKoroi.APTiD.K, or woodhewei-s, represent the woodpeckers in the meso- 

 myodian series, chiefly on account of the pointed and stiffened tail-feathers, the ends 

 of which are denuded, and in some forms quite claw-like. The object of this peculiar 

 structure of the reetriccs is the same as in the woodpeckers, that is, to sujijport tlie 

 bird when clinibiiig on the trunks of trees, as by being pressed against the bark it 

 prevents the bird from 8lipi)ing backwards. The foot is not zygodactylous, how- 

 ever, though it is nearly as j)eculiar and specialized for the purpose of climbitig. The 

 outer toe is about as long as the middle one, and this is considerably longer tlian 

 the innermost toe, thus giving the foot a very singular ajipearance, the more so 

 since all three toes are closely bound together at the base for the whole length of tlie 

 first ph.alanx. The bill, on the other h.ind, presents no resemblance to the wedge- 

 shaped chisel of the woodpeckers, it being more or less curved, generally <|uite slen- 

 der, and often extraordinarily lengthened, as, for instance, in the genus Xtisica. It 

 is therefore easy to understand that the Dendrocolaptidaj do not use their bills as 

 hammers or axes in diguing holes in the solid wood of trees, like the woodpeckers. 

 Some species, as, for instance, the typical Tkmlrocuhiptes, which are marked with 

 dense dusky cross-bars, recall, in their coloration, certain brown Indian woodpeckers, 



