after each capture to the same stand. The thrushes, ranging all over the
globe, afford another striking example. Without speaking of their
nesting habits, their relationship appears in their love of fruit, in
their gait, flight, statuesque attitudes, and abrupt motions.

With the numerous Dendrocolaptine groups, so widely separated and
apparently unrelated, it would be difficult indeed to say which, of
their most striking habits is the ancestral one. Many of the smaller
species live in trees or bushes, and in their habits resemble tits,
warblers, wrens, and other kinds that subsist on small caterpillars,
spiders, &c., gleaned from the leaves and smaller twigs. The Anumbius
nests on trees, but feeds exclusively on the ground in open places;
while other ground-feeders seek their food among dead leaves in dense
gloomy forests. Coryphistera resembles the lark and pipit in its habits;
Cinclodes, the wagtail; Geobates a Saxicola; Limnornis lives in reed
beds growing in the water; Henicornis in reed beds growing out of the
water; and many other ground species exist concealed in the grass on dry
plains; Homorus seeks its food by digging in the loose soil and dead
leaves about the roots of trees; while Geo-sitta, Furnarius, and
Upercerthia obtain a livelihood chiefly by probing in the soil. It would
not be possible within the present limits to mention in detail all the
different modes of life of those species or groups which do not possess
the tree-creeping habit; after them comes a long array of genera in
which this habit is ingrained, and in which the greatly modified feet
and claws are suited to a climbing existence. As these genera comprise
the largest half of the family, also the largest birds in it, we might
expect to find in the tree-creeping the parental habit of the
Dendrocolaptidae, and that from these tropical forest groups have sprung
the widely-diverging thicket, ground, marsh, sea-beach, and
rock-frequenting groups. It happens, however, that these birds resemble