66 BROWN CREEPER. 



loose texture, with its filaments not adhering; the white is in 

 the centre of every feather, and is skirted with brown; lower 

 part of the back, rump, and tail-coverts, rusty brown, the 

 last minutely tipt with whitish; the tail is as long as the body, 

 of a light drab colour, with the inner webs dusky, and consists 

 of twelve quills, each sloping off and tapering to a point in the 

 manner of the Woodpeckers, but proportionably weaker in the 

 shafts; in many specimens the tail was very slightly marked 

 with transverse undulating waves of dusky, scarce observable; 

 the two middle feathers the longest, the others on each side 

 shortening by one-sixth of an inch to the outer one; the wing 

 consists of nineteen feathers, the first an inch long, the fourth 

 and fifth the longest, of a deep brownish black, and crossed 

 about its middle with a curving band of rufous white, a quarter 

 of an inch in breadth, marking ten of the quills; below this the 

 quills are exteriorly edged to within a little of their tips with 

 rufous white, and tipt with white; the three secondaries next 

 the body are dusky white on their inner webs, tipt on the ex- 

 terior margin with white, and above that alternately streaked 

 laterally with black and dull white; the greater and lesser wing 

 coverts are exteriorly tipt with white, the upper part of the 

 exterior edges of the former rufous white; the line over the eye 

 and whole lower parts are white, a little brownish toward the 

 vent> but on the chin and throat pure, silky and glistening; the 

 white curves inwards about the middle of the neck; the bill is 

 half an inch long, slender, compressed sidewise, bending down- 

 wards, tapering to a point, dusky above and white below; the 

 nostrils are oblong, half covered with a convex membrane, and 

 without hairs or small feathers; the inside of the mouth is red- 

 dish; the tongue tapering gradually to a point, and horny to- 

 wards the tip; the eye is dark hazel; the legs and feet a dirty 

 clay colour; the toes placed three before and one behind, the 

 two outer ones connected with the middle one to the first joint; 

 the claws rather paler, large, almost semi-circular, and ex- 

 tremely sharp pointed; the hind claw the largest. The figure in 



