26 o 
The Nahiralist in La Plata. 
honey-eaters and humming birds^ — we might have 
expected to find in the Dendrocolaptidge 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 Dendrocolaptidm, 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. 
