160 



SHORT-BILLED WOODPECKER. 



Dendromm brachyryncJius, SWAINS. 



Above olive-green ; beneath banded with black and white ; 

 front and crown crimson. 



IT is fortunate that the unusual shortness of the bill 

 enables us to impose a name upon this apparently 

 new bird, which at once expresses its peculiar cha- 

 racter : this is the more desirable, since it has such 

 a close resemblance to a bird of another group (the 

 Picus affinis of the Zoological Illustrations, now 

 the Dendrobates affinis\ that it might readily pass, 

 upon a cursory examination, for that species ; both 

 are olive above and banded beneath ; both are 

 small, and both have red crowns. The bills, how- 

 ever, are totally different, not only in size, but in 

 that structure which separates the two subgenera of 

 Dendrobates and Dendromus. It would almost 

 seem, in fact, that the passage from one to the 

 other was actually made by these two birds. 



Upper bill very short, not exceeding six-tenths 

 of an inch from the front ; the lateral ridge near, 

 but not close to the culmen : the gonys, or middle 

 ridge of the under mandible, measures only three- 

 tenths of an inch : the upper part of the head from 



