﻿70 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



truly magnificent bird the Ptiloris paradisea of New 

 Holland ; but it is only among the scansorial creepers 

 that we find this structure in its highest stage of deve- 

 lopment. The common creeper, Certhia familiaris, 

 and the hoopoe, are the only native examples we have ; 

 but the forests of Brazil are the peculiar regions of the 

 genus Dendrocolaptes, one of which, the D. procurvis, 

 has the bill so long and so much curved, that it can 

 only be compared to the blade of a sickle. We never 

 were fortunate enough to meet with this bird, which 

 is particularly rare, and confined to certain localities; so 

 that its peculiar habits have never been investigated : it 

 would be also interesting to know the structure of its 

 tongue. In several other tree-creepers of South Ame- 

 rica, closely allied to the last, the tongue is quite as 

 long as the bill, and even longer, while its tip, being 

 horny and sharp, leads us to infer that it is used to 

 transfix such small insects as are passed over by the 

 more powerfully constructed woodpeckers. 



(65.) IV. Spatulate bills are confined to one genus 

 only, that of Platalea, known by the common name of 

 spoonbills. However anomalous this form may appear, 

 it is but a singular modification of the depressed shape 

 belonging to all the fissirostral types of birds, engrafted, 

 as it were, on the elongated bill of the herons, and ana- 

 logous to the ducks, the boatbills, and other modifica- 

 tions of the same type. Little or nothing appears to be 

 known of the habits of these birds, or what peculiar 

 functions this singular-shaped bill is intended to per- 

 form ; we cannot therefore illustrate its history. 



(66.) V. A Recurved bill is one of the most remark- 

 able deviations from the ordinary form of this member, 

 all other bills being either straight or curved downward ; 

 but in this the point is bent upwards. There is an in- 

 clination to assume this form in some of the tree-creepers, 

 as in the genus Sitella, among the nuthatches, and still 

 more in Zenops, a genus of the Brazilian creepers; 

 nevertheless, although the ridge or gonys of the under 

 mandible, in these examples, is inclined upwards, the 



