OCR Text |
Show 438 PROF. NEWTON ON THE GENUS HYPHERPES. [Mar. 15, The peculiarity, therefore, of its sternum, when taken with its tarsal scutellation and peculiar syrinx, seems to demand that, as has already been proposed bv Garrod, the genus Conopophaga1 should form a primary division'of the Tracheophone Passeres, which may be defined as follows : - Conopophagida?.-Tracheophonine Passeres, with a holorhinal skull and four-notched sternum, an exaspidean tarsus, and a syrinx with no intrinsic muscles, and with the stemo-tracheales not attached to the processus vocales. As regards the possession of a four-notched sternum by these birds and the PteroptochidaB, I am not inclined to consider it in any way a primitive character, but rather as an instance of a simple modification having been independently acquired in different groups of birds (many parallel cases might be given). The Tracheophonine syrinx must, without doubt, be regarded as a modification of some Haploophonine form -; and in all these last birds, as in the still less specialized Eurylaemidae, the sternum has the typical form with but two notches. On the other hand, the similarity of form of the sternum in the Pteroptochidse and Conopophagidae may very probably indicate that these groups may both have sprung from some common stock which had already developed a peculiar sternum. 4. Note on the Generic N a m e Hypherpes. By ALFRED N E W T O N , M.A., F.R.S., &c. [Received March 15, 1881.] My attention having been called by a note in the ' Zoological Record' (xvi. Aves, p. 28) to the prior use in entomology, by the Baron Chaudoir (Bull. Mosc. 1838, p. 8), of the generic name Hypherpes, conferred by me some years ago (P. Z. S. 1863, p. 85) on a bird discovered in Madagascar by m y brother, I beg leave to substitute for the latter the name Hypositta3, and hope that this curious form will henceforth be known as Hypositta corallirostris. 1 Corythopis has not yet been anatomically examined; by Sundevall it is placed near Formicarius. It is therefore nearly certain to be Tracheophonine, and is probably really closely allied to Conopophaga. 2 Garrod, P. Z. S. 1876, p. 517. 3 Th. UTTO, sub; airrn, Sitta. |