206 BULLETIW 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



longest; longest primaries may be the ninth, ninth and eighth, 

 eighth and seventh, or seventh, sixth, and fifth; longer primaries usu- 

 ally with inner webs not appreciably sinuated, though sometimes the 

 first and second are faintly so; in one species {M. atronitens) the inner 

 webs of first four have minute angular projections, much as in Callo- 

 thrus. Tail from two-thirds to five-sixths as long as wing, even or 

 slightly rounded. Tarsus much longer than culmen, less than one- 

 fourth to nearly one-third as long as wing, the anterior scutella dis- 

 tinct; middle toe, with claw, a little shorter than tarsus; lateral toe 

 with claws reaching about to base of middle claw; hallux slightly 

 shorter than lateral toes, much stouter, its claws shorter than the 

 digit; all the claws acute and strongly curved. 



Coloration. — Adult males uniform black, more or less glossy, with 

 or without brown head and neck; adult females plain grayish or brown- 

 ish (usually indistinctly streaked below), that of one species uniform 

 black; young distinctly streaked below. (In two South American 

 species both sexes are plain brownish gray or light brown, with wings 

 largely rusty.) 



Range. — Temperate and tropical America in general, except West 

 Indies' and Central America. 



With the exception of three or four species, the members of this 

 genus agree very well with one another in structural characters, the 

 differences being slight and immaterial. Of these aberrant species M. 

 rufo-axillaris is most different, the wing and tail being proportionally 

 longer, the latter more rounded, and the bill rather shorter and thicker. 

 In this species, only, the female is black, like the male. 



In M. hadius and its near relative, M. fringillarius, the wing is very 

 short and rounded, exceeding the tail in length by less than the length 

 of the culmen ; the ninth primary is shorter than the fourth, the fifth 

 being nearly if not quite equal to the longest, and the nostrils linear 

 instead of rounded. In these two species the coloration is very differ- 

 ent from that of any other, both sexes being light brown or brown- 

 ish gray with the wings mostly cinnamon-rufous, and they are said to 

 be nonparasitic, building their own nest and rearing their young in 

 the usual fashion. 



M. atronitens has the bill relatively longer and narrower than the 

 other species, and the inner webs of the three outer primaries instead 

 of being very faintly or not at all sinuated have an angular projection 

 of the margin, much as in the species of Callothms, but much less 

 pronounced, and there seems also to be a slight development of the 

 neck-ruffs of that genus. 



The habits of some species are scarcely, if at all known; but, while of 

 the three species of the Argentine Republic two {M. bonariensis and 



'A South American species {M. bonarienm or M. atronitens) is said to have been 

 introduced into St. Thomas and Vieque. 



