Page 6

6
ROCKY-MOUNTAIN ANTCATCHER.
JXYIOTHERA OBSOLETA.
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 JMyrmothera, a name they
have substituted for /lyiothera; 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 Formicivora; 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 Jlyiothera, as Illiger would also have done.
The only point, therefore, to be established by us, is whether
this bird is a Mlyiothera 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