i26 Allen’s naturalist’s library. 
THE NUTHATCHES. FAMILY SITTID/E. 
These little birds hold an intermediate position between the 
Creepers, and the Tits. They have a soft tail like the latter, 
not a spiny tail like the Creepers, and they differ from both 
the above-mentioned families in having a wedge-shaped and 
Woodpecker-like bill, with which they are enabled to hammer 
and prise off the bark of trees in a manner which would not 
disgrace their larger Picarian relatives. 
The Nuthatches are chiefly inhabitants of the northern parts 
of both Hemispheres, extending in America as far south as 
Mexico ; and, in the Old World, they are plentifully represented 
in the Himalayas, while in the mountains of Burma the largest 
known species of the genus, Si/ fa magna, is found. In the 
Indian region an allied genus, Dendrophila , is plentifully dis- 
tributed, finding in Madagascar an outlying and isolated repre- 
sentative in the genus -Hypositta, while in Australia and New 
Guinea occurs the genus Sitella. 
THE TRUE NUTHATCHES. GENUS SITTA. 
Sitta, Linn., Syst. Nat., i., p. 177 (1766). 
Type, A. europcea, Linn. 
Of the European Nuthatches there are four species, two of 
which are southern and two northern. Of the former, both 
of which are black-headed, Sitta krueperi is an inhabitant of 
Asia Minor, and Sitta whiteheadi of the high pine-forests of 
Corsica. Of Sitta emsia, the distribution is given below, and 
Sitta europma — with certain variations — extends from Scandi- 
navia, across Asia, to Kamtchatka. 
THE NUTHATCH. SITTA CASSIA. 
{Plate XIV.) 
Sitta europica , Lath., Ind. Orn., i., p. 261 (1790); Macg., Br. 
B., iii., p. 48 (1840); Newt. ed. Yarr., i., p. 473 (1873); 
Wyatt, Brit. B., pi. 9, figs, r, 2 (1894). 
Sittacasia, Meyer; Dresser, B. Eur., iii., p. 175, pi. 119(1873) ; 
B. O. U. List Br. B., p. 28 (1S83) ; Seeb., Brit. B., i., 
p. 523 (1883); Gadow, Cat. B. Brit. Mus., viii., p. 347 
(1883); Lilford, Col.Fig. Brit. B., pt. viii. (1888); Saunders, 
Man., p. 105 (1889); Wyatt, Brit. B., pi. 9, fig. r (1894) 
