Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/200

Rh groups,—acknowledges that he is unacquainted with any forms which soften down the important difference between the bills and tongues of the one and the other of these Families; and declares his opinion that the Psittacidæ afford more difficulties to the inquirer than any other known group in the whole Class.



Between the Parrots and the Woodpeckers there seemed to Mr. Vigors, at first, to be an equal diversity, arising from the structure of the beak and tongue, but he was decided in his opinion of their proximity, by observing that while there is no other group with which the former accord more closely in such characters, they possess an affinity to no birds but the Picidæ, in the structure of the foot and the use to which they apply it. Of the birds commonly considered as