HETEEOPELMA.— TITYEA. 117 



We have two specimens of this bird from the neighbourhood of Panama which agree 

 much better with the Venezuelan form than with specimens from countries lying more 

 immediately to the north. 



H. stenorhynchum is scarcely distinguishable from H. amazonum from the Amazons 

 Valley, but the head is rather more rufescent and the belly somewhat paler. The 

 narrowness of the bill, on which some stress was laid in the original descriptions, seems 

 to us now to be of slight importance. Mr. Goering, who discovered this species at 

 San Esteban in Venezuela, states that in life the iris of the eye is white i. 



Pam. COTINGIDiE*. 



Subfam. TITYRIN^. 



The Tityrinse can be distinguished from the other five subfamilies of Cotingidse by a 

 singular well-marked feature — the adult males in all the species having the second or 

 penultimate primary so reduced in size as to be not more than half the length of the 

 outermost primary (see Scl. Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xiv. p. 327). In the female this 

 feather is of the normal shape and size. 



TITYEA. 



ntyra, Vieillot, Anal. p. 39 (1816) ; Scl. Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xiv. p. 328. 



Mr. Sclater makes two main divisions of Tityra — one with bare lores, the other with 

 the lores feathered. This second section has also a more flattened bill and is probably 

 of generic rank, and might be separated under Kaup's title Erator. The genus, as a 

 whole, according to Mr. Sclater, contains five species, to which we now add two of the 

 Erator section. 



The bill of T. semifasciata is stout (wider and flatter in T. albitorques), with a distinct 



* Mr. Sclater (Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xiv. p. 326) recognizes six subfamilies of Cotingidse, all of which, except 

 the RupicolinsB, are represented in our region. 



The family, as a whole, strictly belongs to the Neotropical Eegion, a few members reaching its northern 

 limits in Mexico, and others the confines of the Argentine Eepublic. It numbers about 110 species, of which 

 twenty-six are foivud within our borders. 



The family Cotingidee as at present constituted is one of the most heterogeneous of all the groups of birds. 

 One has only to compare the little brightly coloured Calyptura cristata with the large sombre TJmbreUa-birds 

 (Gephalopterus) to see how obviously this is the case. Unfortunately the anatomy of a large number of the 

 species has not yet been studied, so that the classification of the family mainly rests upon external characters. 

 The bond of union at present is the structure of the tarsal covering, which, to use SundevaU's term is 

 " pyenaspidean." This structure includes the Phytotomidae, which are again separable by their serrate 

 biUs. 



