CISTOTHOEUS. 107 



Of this species in Mexico we know but little. Prof. Sumichrast mentions it casually 

 as having been obtained by him in Orizaba. In Guatemala it is of very local distri- 

 bution, owing, doubtless, to scarcity of grassy swamps, its chief resort. On the western 

 border of the small lake near Duefias it was always present in the rushes and coarse 

 grass which surround the margin of the open water. This spot was the abode of a 

 good many pairs. Its shy skulking habits make it a bird difficult of observation, and 

 it is only by remaining motionless in a place near to where a bird has made its presence 

 known by its note that an occasional glimpse of it may be obtained. The original 

 specimen of C. elegans was thus secured on the 1st of February, 1858 ; but others were 

 subsequently shot at the end of July and of August, one obtained on the latter date 

 being a young bird in its first moult. The specimen from the Volcan de Agua was 

 found in the long grass which, with scattered pines, clothes the peak of the mountain 

 from 10,000 feet above the sea and upwards. It was at an elevation of 11,000 feet 

 that this bird was shot, in sight of the Lake of Duenas, but 6000 feet above it, and far 

 from any water. This bird differs in no way from the Duenas ones, except that its 

 bill is very short, hardly exceeding that of C. stellaris. 



Of Chiriqui examples we have now seen several : in none are the strige of the head 

 very distinct ; but they show no other peculiarities. 



The figure is taken from a Duefias specimen, the type of C. elegans. 



Earn. ]V[OTACILLID.a:, 



ANTHUS. 



Anthus, Bechstein, Naturg. Deutschl. iii. p. 704 (1807). 



The genus Anthus has been divided into a number of sections, which have been 

 treated as genera or subgenera according to the views of different ornithologists. In 

 its comprehensive sense Anthus contains perhaps fifty species, which are spread over 

 nearly the whole world with the exception of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Of 

 these, if we exclude A. pratensis, which only appears as a straggler in Greenland, eight 

 species occur in America, two in the northern and six in the southern continent. The 

 northern birds, on account of their longer and more pointed wings, have been sepa- 

 rated from the southern ; and each section has been again divided into two — slight 

 differences in the formation of the point of the wing and in the proportions of the 

 tarsus, toes, and hind claws furnishing characters for their separation. These divi- 

 sions, however, are barely recognizable, and may all be merged in the genus Anthus 

 without difficulty. 



In Central America only two species of Anthus occur, viz. Anthus ludovicianus, 

 which spends the winter months in the highlands of Mexico and Guatemala in small 

 numbers, and A. rufus, a southern species of wide range, which just enters our fauna 



14* 



