6 
ROCKY-MOUNTAIN ANTCATCHER. 
MYIO THERA OB S OLE TA. 
Plate I. Fig. 2. 
Troglodytes obsoleta , Say, in Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains , vol. II, p* 4. 
Philadelphia Museum , No. 2420. 
This bird is one of those beings which seem created to puzzle the 
naturalist, and convince him that nature will never conform to his 
systems, however perfect his ingenuity may be capable of devising 
them. This will become sufficiently apparent, when we consider 
in what manner different authors would have arranged it. 
We cannot positively decide whether Vieillot and his followers 
would have referred this species to Myrmothera , a name they 
have substituted for Mijiothera; to their genus Thryothorus, which 
we unite to Troglodytes ; or to their slender-billed section of Tam- 
nophilus, rejected by us from that genus, and of which some recent 
authors have made a genus called Eormicivora; yet we have very 
little hesitation in stating our belief, that they would have assigned 
its place among the species of the latter. According to our classi¬ 
fication, it is certainly not a Tamnophilus, as we adopt the genus, 
agreeably to the characters given by Temminck, who, not admit¬ 
ting the genus Troglodytes , would undoubtedly have arranged 
this bird with JHyiothera , as Illiger would also have done. 
The only point, therefore, to be established by us, is whether 
this bird is a JHyiothera or a Troglodytes. It is, in fact, a link 
intermediate to both. After a careful examination of its form, 
especially the unequal length of the mandibles, the notch of the 
superior mandible, and the length of the tarsus; and, after a due 
consideration of the little that is known relative to its habits, we 
