The Woodhewer Family. 241 



or four inches beneath the surface with its immense 

 curved probing beak. 



Again, when we consider a large number of 

 species of different groups, we find that there is 

 not with the Tree-creepers, as with most families, 

 any special habit or manner of life linking them 

 together; but that, on the contrary, different 

 genera, and, very frequently, different species 

 belonging to one genus, possess habits peculiarly 

 their own. In other families, even where the 

 divergence is greatest, what may be taken as the 

 original or ancestral habit is seldom or never quite 

 obsolete in any of the members. This we see, for 

 instance, in the woodpeckers, some of which have 

 acquired the habit of seeking their food exclusively 

 on the ground in open places, and even of nesting 

 in the banks of streams. Yet all these wanderers, 

 even those which have been structurally modified 

 in accordance with their altered way of life, retain 

 the primitive habit of clinging vertically to the 

 trunks of trees, although the habit has lost its 

 use. With the tyrant birds — a family showing an 

 extraordinary amount of variation— it is the same ; 

 for the most divergent kinds are frequently seen 

 reverting to the family habit of perching on an 

 elevation, from which to make forays after passing 

 insects, returning after each capture to the same 

 stand. The thrushes, ranging all over the globe, 

 afford another striking example. Without speaking 

 of their nesting habits, their relationship appears in 

 their love of fruit, in their gait, flight, statuesque 

 attitudes, and abrupt motions. 



With the numerous Dendrocolaptine groups, so 



