1876-1877.] 263 



fishers, their points of resemblance and difference." The reader, 

 after giving the classifications of Linnaeus, more particularly referred 

 to the order Picidce, which embraced a great variety of birds, some 

 of which had little affinity to each other, including woodpeckers, 

 crows, trogans, cuckoos, kingfishers, humming birds, hoopoes, 

 creepers, and others. He stated that the woodpecker was more 

 strictly a climbing bird than a percher, and the kingfisher finds its 

 place more properly among the passerine birds. Few parts of the 

 animal kingdom have, however, exercised the ingenuity of classi- 

 fiers, more than that under notice. A convenient arrangement of 

 the birds allied to the woodpeckers is that of M. Meyer ; he calls 

 them Pice, and makes two divisions — the first, containing those 

 with stiff feathers — viz., the genera Picus and Certhia; and secondly, 

 those with soft feathers, Yunx (the wryneck), Sitta (the nuthatch), 

 and Tichodrama (the wall-creepers). The true woodpeckers and 

 the wryneck have one feature in common in the long and exten- 

 sile tongue which is projected when the bird is in search of its 

 food. Of the European varieties of the woodpecker, five are 

 known in England — viz., the great black, the green, the great 

 black and white, and the middle and lesser spotted varieties. 

 Only two of these are recorded in Ireland — the great spotted 

 (Picus maior), and, more doubtfully, the lesser spotted (Picus 

 minor). The question was discussed as to whether the scarcity of 

 old timber in Ireland is, or is not, a cause of the absence of the 

 common green woodpecker (Picus viridis). In Thompson's 

 " Birds of Ireland," this idea is maintained. The reader suggests 

 a connection between the geological strata, and the food and other 

 conditions of life necessary, showing by reference to the geological 

 map, that the woodpeckers in England flourished on secondary, 

 and particularly Oolitic strata, the latter of which is entirely 

 unknown here. These birds are becoming rare in England. The 

 wryneck and woodcreepers still abound, the latter are plentiful in 

 Ireland, but the presence of the former has not yet been recorded. 



