8 ROCKY-MOUNTAIN ANTCATCHER. 
Pittee, removed some other species, in order to place them in his 
new genera Conopophaga and Tamnophilus, giving the name of 
Myrmothera to the remaining species, with the exception of the 
Mijiothera rex, for which he formed a distinct genus, with the 
name of Grallaria. We agree with Vieillot, in respect to the 
latter bird; but as regards the other species, we prefer the arrange¬ 
ment of Temminck, who has adopted the genus Myiothera nearly 
as constituted by Illiger, including some of the slender-billed 
Tamnophili of Vieillot, of which our Myiothera obsoleta would 
probably be one, as above stated. 
The genus thus constituted contains numerous species, which 
inhabit the hottest parts of the globe; a greater number of them 
existing in South America than elsewhere. For the sake of con- 
venience, several sections may be formed in this genus, founded on 
the characters of the bill, tail, and tarsus; but as we have only 
one species, it does not rest with us to make divisions, and we shall 
merely remark, that our obsoleta is referable to the last section, 
consisting of those whose bills are the most slender, elongated, and 
arcuated, in company with the Turdus lineatus of Gmelin. 
The Antcatchers may justly be enumerated amongst the bene¬ 
factors of mankind, as they dwell in regions where the ants are 
so numerous, large, and voracious, that without their agency, co¬ 
operating with that of the Myrmecophaga jubata, and a few other 
ant-eating quadrupeds, the produce of the soil would inevitably 
be destroyed in those fertile parts of the globe. The ant-hills of 
South America are often more than twenty feet in diameter, and 
many feet in height. These wonderful edifices are thronged with 
two hundred fold more inhabitants, and are proportionally far 
more numerous, than the small ones with which we are familiar. 
Breeding in vast numbers, and multiplying with great celerity 
and profusion, the increase of these insects would soon enable 
them to swarm over the greatest extent of country, were not their 
propagation and diffusion limited by the active exertions of that 
