478 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



own ubiquity. He says : " In the morning, and shortly before sunset, may be heard 

 a melancholy cry, as this ant-thrush 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, then it is to the right ; soon after, you hear it on the left. At first 

 you imagine the bird has the power of a ventriloquist ; but, by dint of patience and 

 watching, you may see it creeping swiftly and silently among the grass and brush- 

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

 explained. The nest is also difficult to obtain ; it is placed 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 present super-family, which are dis- 

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

 an osteological character, of which we heard considerable during the earlier part of this 

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



O 



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 nares passing 

 behind, instead of in front of, the ends of the nasal processes of the przemaxillae, all 

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

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

 regarded as belonging to the family Dendrocolaptida9, are schizorhinal, like the plovers 

 and gulls. Curiously enough, this specialization, which is quite unique in the order, 

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

 ture only found elsewhere in the Pteroptochidas among mesomyodian Passeres. The 

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

 schizorhinal Formicarioideae form a very natural group, since it is very improbable 

 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 endaspidean Formicarioideaa in the holorhinal Dendroco- 

 laptida? and the schizorhinal Furnariidae. 



The DENDROCOLAPTID^E, or woodhewers, 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 rectrices is the same as in the woodpeckers, that is, to support the 

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

 prevents the bird from slipping backwards. The foot is not zygodactylous, how- 

 ever, though it is nearly as peculiar and specialized for the purpose of climbing. The 

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

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

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

 first phalanx. The bill, on the other hand, presents no resemblance to the wedge- 

 shaped chisel of the woodpeckers, it being more or less curved, generally quite slen- 

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

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

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

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

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



