98 
MYIOTHERA OBSOLETA. 
will never conform to Ills systems, however perfect b*? 
ingenuity may be capable of devising them. This 
become sufficiently apparent, when we consider in wb a 
manner different authors would have arranged it. 
We cannot positively decide whether Vieillot and l' 1 * 
followers would have referred this species to Ml)\ 
mothera, a name they have substituted for Myiothef a ’ 
to their genus Thryothoms, which we unite 
Troglodytes; or to their slender billed section j 
Tamnophilus, rejected by us from that genus, and 
which some recent authors have made a genus calif 
Formicivora; yet we have very little hesitation * 
stating our belief, that they w'ould have assigned 
place among the species of the latter. According * 
our classification, it is certainly not a Tamnophilus, * 
we adopt the genus, agreeably to the characters gi'f 
by Temminck,who, not admitting the genus Troglodyte 
would undoubtedly have arranged this bird with Mll ,ir 
thera, as Illiger would also have done. 
The only point, therefore, to be established by us, ’j: 
whether this bird is a Myiotkera or a Troglodytes. | 
A 
is, in fact, a link intermediate to both. After a can 
examination of its form, especially the unequal lent, 
of the mandibles, the notch of the superior inaudib; _ 
and the length of the tarsus ; and, after a due eons’r 
ration of the little that is known relative to its hah' 1 .* 
we unhesitatingly place it with Myiothera, though, 1 
consequence of its having the bill more slender, 
and arcuated, than that of any other species I b' 1 ',, 
seen, it must occupy the last station in the genus, b**f* 
still more closely allied to Troglodytes, than those spe c,e , 
w-hose great affinity to that genus has been pointed o'. ' 
by Cuvier. The figure which our rocky mount* 1 ' 
antcatcher resembles most, is Buffon’s PI. Enl. 823, W 
1, ( Myiothera lineata .) The colours of our bird 
also similar to those of a wren ; but this similitude 
likewise observed in other Myiothera. 
This bird was brought from the Arkansaw rivet,, 
the neighbourhood of the Rocky Mountains, by . 
Long’s exploring party, and was described by ~ 
