Sclater on the Systema Avium. 3 1 



scutelliplantares") , with which it agrees in the structure of the 

 plantar scutes (' Tentamen,' p. 55). Nitzsch associates Upnpa 

 with Bitceros and Alcedo in his family Lipoglossae of the Picariae. 

 There can be no longer any question, I think, that the latter view 

 is correct, and that Upitpa is more nearly allied to the Bucerotidae 

 than to any other group. Some of the thin-billed Bucerotidae 

 of the genus Toccus even resemble Upupa in habit and external 

 appearance. The palate of Upnpa at once shows that it is no 

 Passerine bird.* Next to the Upupidae must come also the small 

 African group Irrisoridae, as was first suggested by Strickland, 

 and has been amply shown by Dr. Murie in his excellent disser- 

 tation on the Upupidae and their relationships. f 



2. Eurylcemus. The Eurylaemidae were placed by Gray and 

 most of the older authors near the Kingfishers and Motmots, 

 i. e. outside the Passeres, as now restricted. Mr. Wallace, I 

 believe, first started the idea that they are the representatives of 

 the Cotingidae in the Old World, and has thus arranged them in 

 his v Geographical Distribution. '| There is now no doubt that 

 the Eurylaemidae are truly Passerine, as I pointed out in this 

 Journal in 1872, from an examination of the sternum, § and as 

 Mr. Garrod subsequently confirmed from the form of the palate. || 

 although the}' are singularly divergent from all other known 

 Passeres in having the Jiexor hallucis longus connected by a vin- 

 culum with the Jiexor digitorum profundus. 



3. Todus, associated by Cabanis with Todirostriun in the 

 Tyrannidae, and by Sundevall with the Piprinae, should be cor- 

 rectly placed, as I have already shown, % from its sternal char- 

 ters, next to the Momotidae, and has nothing to do with the true 

 Passeres. The pterylosis confirms this view.ff 



4. Euryceros was formerly referred by Gray to the Bucerotidae, 

 but at my suggestion, I believe, was removed in his last work 

 ('Hand-list,' ii. p. 21) to a much more natural position among 

 the Sturnidae, A glance at its feet is sufficient to show that it is 

 a laminiplantar Oscine. Mr. Sharpe has recently included 

 Euryceros in the heterogeneous assemblage which he has united 



* Cf. Huxley, P. Z. S. 1867, p. 447. 



t Ibis, 1873, p. 181. + Vol. ii. p. 294. 



h Ibis, 1872, p. 177. || p. Z. S. 1877, p. 449. 



II Ibis, 1872, p. 177. See also Murie, Ibis, 1872, p. 410. 



ft Nitzsch, Pterylogr. p. 89. 



