202 



I could not resist asking M. Meves the impertinent question, how, 

 issuing forth from the town for a summer ramble, he came to dis- 

 cover what all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England and 

 other countries had, for the last century at least, been in vain trying 

 to make out, straining their eyes, and puzzling their wits 1 He freely 

 explained to me how, in a number of ' Naumannia,' an accidental 

 misprint of the word representing tail-feathers instead of wing-fea- 

 thers — a mistake which another author took seriously, and ridiculed 

 — first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently examined 

 in the Museum the tail-feathers of various species of Snipe, re- 

 marked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he blew upon 

 them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with 

 greater force through the air ; and at the same time he made 

 more careful observations than he had before done of the living 

 birds in the breeding season. In short, in him the obscure hint was 

 thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a hundred other minds it had 

 failed to come to life. At my invitation, M. Meves wrote for the 

 Zoological Society of London the paper which 1 have here trans- 

 lated. 



John Wolley. 

 April, 1858. 



2. Synopsis of the American Ant-birds (Formicariid.«). 

 By Philip Lutley Sclater, M.A., F.L.S., etc. (Part I., 

 containing the Thamnophilin^e.) 



(Aves, PI. CXXXIX.-CXL.) 



Although Prince Max von Neuwied and M. d'Orbigny both re- 

 cognized the error of separating the genera Thamnophi/us and Cono- 

 pophaga from their natural allies the Formicarii, and placing 

 them, one in the family Laniidce, and the other among the Muscica- 

 pidcB (as has been done by Swainson and other authors), Midler, 

 in his celebrated article " Ueber die bisher unbekannten typischen 

 Verschiedenheiten der Stimmorgane der Passerinen," was the first to 

 constitute this and the other peculiar groups of American Tracheo- 

 phonce on an intelligible basis. Cabanis and Burmeister have since 

 followed out Muller's ideas, and reduced the genera belonging to 

 this family into a better-organized series. The arrangement of these 

 birds, employed in the present attempt at a synopsis of the numerous 

 and very imperfectly known species, does not materially differ from 

 that which the latter of these authors has employed in his ' Ueber- 

 sicht der Thiere Brasiliens.' In one respect, however, I have adhered 

 more closely to Muller's ideas ; that is, in excluding the genus Scy- 

 talopus and its allies, for which Midler created the family name 

 " Scytalojndce*." I have already stated hi these Proceedings"!;, that 

 * More correctly written Sci/talopodidm — the derivation being vkiitoKov and 



7TOVS, 7ro5oS. 



t See P.Z. S. 1858, p. 69. 



