190 Mr. P. L. Sclater on the Neotropical 
(of which he constituted an independent family under the name 
ec Khinomydsese ”) to the neighbourhood of the Ant-Thrushes 
(Formicariidse) , and assigned as their most essential character 
“ la forme des narines, toujours recouvertes d'un opercule car- 
tilagineux bombe, de sorte que Fouverture est au-dessous, 
comme une fente longitudinale 
Captain King, who was engaged in the survey of the Ma¬ 
gellan Straits about the same time, likewise met with one of 
these singular birds in Patagonia, and designated it in his 
MS. “Hylactes tarnii,” under which name it was described 
in the f Proceedings' of the Zoological Society for 1830-31. 
Besides a few scattered notices and figures, little progress 
was made towards the right understanding of these birds until 
1847, when J ohann Muller, in his celebrated article upon the 
voice-organs of the Passerinse, showed that Scytalopus be¬ 
longed to the Tracheophonine section of the Order. Muller 
likewise pointed out that Scytalopus , and its near ally Ptero- 
ptochus, differed from all other Passeres known to him in having 
a double fissure in the posterior margin of the sternum f. The 
latter fact, as regards Pteroptochus , had been previously re¬ 
cognized by Eyton J ; but Mr. Eyton has not noticed the pe¬ 
culiar arrangement of the trachea. 
Following up Muller's great discovery, Dr. Cabanis, in his 
f Ornithologische Notizen/ published shortly afterwards, ar¬ 
ranged together all the then known genera of these birds in the 
Tracheophonine division of the Passeres. Dr. Cabanis, how¬ 
ever, did not make a separate family of these birds, but placed 
them amongst the Ant-Thrushes, in his family “ Eriodoridse." 
Bonaparte, in his f Conspectus' (1850), followed Cabanis's 
classification. 
In 1860, in the second part of the * Museum Heineanum,' 
Dr. Cabanis adopted the more correct view of assigning higher 
rank in classification to these peculiar birds, and instituted 
the family “ Pteroptochidse" for their reception. Of his 
family Pteroptochidse Dr. Cabanis made two subfamilies, 
* Voyage dans l’Amerique Meridionale, Ois. p. 192. 
t Op. cit. p. 41. 
\ Zool. Voy. Beagle, Birds, p. 150. 
