260 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



honey-eaters and humming birds — we might have 

 expected to find in the Dendrocolaptida3 a better 

 imitation of the woodpecker in so variable an organ 

 as the beak, if not in the tongue. 



Probably the oven-birds, and their nearest re- 

 lations — generalized, hardy, builders of strong nests, 

 and prolific — represent the parental form ; and 

 when birds of this type had spread over the entire 

 continent they became in different districts fre- 

 quenters of marshes, forests, thickets and savannas. 

 "With altered life-habits the numerous divergent 

 forms originated ; some, like Xiphorynchus, retain- 

 ing a probing beak in a wonderfully modified form, 

 attenuated in an extreme degree, and bent like a 

 sickle ; others diverging more in the direction of 

 nuthatches and woodpeckers. 



This sketch of the Dendrocolaptidaa, necessarily 

 slight and imperfect, is based on a knowledge of 

 the habits of about sixty species, belonging to 

 twenty-eight genera : from personal observation 

 I am acquainted with less than thirty species. It 

 is astonishing to find how little has been written 

 about these most interesting birds in South America. 

 One tree-creeper only, Purnarius rufus, the oven- 

 bird par excellence, has been mentioned, on account 

 of its wonderful architecture, in almost every 

 general work of natural history published during 

 the present century; yet the oven-bird does not 

 surpass, or even equal in interest, many others in 

 this family of nearly three hundred members. 



