^t^&Sr tV^. if . - s and their hatching an exclusive characteristic of the feathered */ ^> ^C* tribes, for we have birds which leave the hatching to be done by the heat of decaying vegetable matter heaped upon them, while the latest indications are that the old report of the Monotremes laying eggs, hitherto regarded as a fable, is substantially true. The so-called 'pneumacity ' of the bird-skeleton, or the peculiarity of the bones being hollow and filled with air through the canals in connection with the respiratory organs, has also been regarded as belonging to the birds only, but the bones of the extinct Pterosaurians and some other forms were also filled with air, air-canals being present in nearly all the bones of the skeletons of the larger species, while several recent birds, for instance the kiwis and the penguins, are entirely destitute of pneumacity in any part of the skeleton. "We will mention one more character which cannot be upheld as peculiar to the birds in view of our present knowledge. It is well known that in birds the different bones of the skull grow together at an early age, fusing so completely that the borders of the individual bones are completely obliterated, while in most other vertebrates these bones remain separated by sutures during the whole lifetime of the animal. Still there have been found remains of an extinct bird, the remarkable Gastornis, in which the sutures were permanent, while, on the other hand, all tends to show that the ancient Pterosaurians had the different pieces of the skull fused together as com- pletely and as early as any bird now living. Since we thus have to fall back upon the feathers as the most distinctive feature of a bird, a brief comment upon their structure and origin may not be out of place. Comparing the scales of reptiles, the feathers of birds, and the hairs of mammals, the popular verdict would probably be in favor of regarding the hairs and the feathers as more resembling one another than either of them do the scales, particularly when we remember the many hair-like appendages in birds. Scientific investigation, however, seemed to prove the correctness of quite the opposite view, and the alleged identity of scales and feathers has been frequently used as a further argument for the close relation- ship between reptiles and birds, the scale-like feathers along the edge of the penguin's wiiK>- behiT regarded as a structure intermediate in character between the two kinds of O O O integument and a proof of their common origin, while much stress was laid upon the differences between hair and feather. True, the latter differ radically, particularly in their early stages, for a hair is formed in a solid ingrowth of the epidermis, while the feather originates on the top of a large papilla ; but the homology of the latter Avith the scales of the reptiles is not therefore a sure thing, and Mr. J. A. Jeffries has recently brought forward arguments which indicate a different nature of the two structures, the strongest being that feathers may grow upon scuta. It should also be remarked that the above-mentioned scale-like feathers of the penguin are in every respect true feathers, and not half feather, half scale. Young birds, when breaking the egg enclosing them, vary greatly in their develop- ment, some being quite naked, as, for example, most Passeres, Picaria?, herons, and cormorants, but soon assuming a more or less full covering of soft down, which again is replaced by firmer feathers; other kinds are not hatched before the downy clothing is perfected within the egg-shell, while the final feather plumage is put on afterwards; the former are called Gymnopaedes (yi/nuws, naked; paides, children); the latter group ; Dasypa3des (dasys, downy). All the Gymnopcedes are fed in the nest by the INTRODUCTION. 3 parents (Altrices), and so are many of those which are born down-clad, but a great number of the latter are able to run about immediately upon leaving the egg (Pra> coces). A few birds remain so long within the egg that the feathers are developed before the shell bursts, this being the case with the young talegallas, and these might be called Pteropsedes. As remarked above, the feather is formed on a dermal papilla. At an early stage such papillae arise above the surface of the skin, each of which is grooved longitudi- nally on one side. This median groove sends off laterally numerous smaller ones in an obliquely upward direction, gradually becoming shallower. The secretion of the papilla moulds in these furrows, and, when pushed upward by new formations below, dries and splits into a feather, consisting of a scape and disconnected lateral barbs. These imperfect feathers are called plumules, and, taken collectively, constitute the down. While the papilla from which these plumules were formed sinks later on into a pit or follicle of the skin, another crop of more perfect feathers starts from papilla? at the bottom of pits which are situated at the intersections of numerous ridges of the skin (the latter without sudoriferous glands and sebaceous follicles). These papillae are more deeply grooved, and have, moreover, A T ery often a corresponding but slighter furrow on the opposite side, from which originates a usually small extra feather, known as the after-shaft (hyporachis), and attached to the under side of the main shaft. These stronger and more perfect feathers, which are called contour feathers, consist of a central stem and a lateral ' web ' on each side. The former is composed of two parts ; a lower, cylindrical, and hollow portion, the quill proper, enclosing the papilla, which shrivels when the feather ceases to grow; it merges into the terminal part, the shaft, which is four-sided and solid, and from which spring two lateral sets of barbs or radii ; these have on their margins secondary processes, barbules, which by means of small hooks or barbicels interlock with the neighboring barbs, thus unitin" 1 o o ' o them into continuous and elastic 'webs,' termed the inner or outer web, according to the relative position to the median line of the body. Only in a few of the recent birds, as in penguins and ostriches, are the feathers dis- tributed evenly over the whole body. In all Euornithes they are arranged in special and regular groups or tracts (pterylae), separated by naked or downy spaces (apteria), which are concealed by the overlying feathers of the neighboring tracts, an arrangement by which smoothness of the plumage is secured whatever movement the bird may under- take. It may be regarded as a rule that the smaller the feathers in a tract the smaller are the separating spaces, the latter sometimes becoming so narrow as to be nearly obliterated. The different grouping of the tracts, their distribution and ramification, are subject to considerable variation, and are to a certain extent valuable for syste- matic purposes, because sometimes diagnostic of important divisions. Two of the pterylas are of special interest and importance the alar and the caudal tracts, both including the strongest feathers of the whole body. From the former spring the remiges, which form the essential part of the wing, and without which no bird can fly. Those which are fixed to the hand are called primaries ; secondaries are those on the forearm, the three innermost of which are styled tertiaries. The number of primaries is usually ten, often nine, very seldom eleven ; that of sec- ondaries from six to forty. The bases of these are overlaid by several rows of larger and smaller contour feathers, the upper or under wing coverts, according to their posi- tion on the upper or lover surface of the wing. For further detail we refer to the accompanying cut, which will give more information at a glance than we can detail in NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. -y S p FIG. 1. Feathers of a passerine wing, seen from above; a, alula; j>, primaries; Ic, lesser coverts; gc, greater coverts; }:, primary coverts; me, middle coverts; s, secondaries; sc, scapulars; t, tertiaries. a long description ; but we would like to call attention to the middle row (me in the figure), the so-called ' middle coverts,' which in many birds, particularly among the Passeres, are arranged in a manner dif- ferent from the other feathers, as they overlap each other with their inner edges, while all the other feathers have the outer margin free, and the inner one covered by the overlying feathers. The caudal tract embraces the tail feathers (rectrices) and their upper and under coverts. They are in pairs, and are counted from the outside towards the centre. Their number varies from eight to thirty-two, but twelve is the rule, less the rare exception. Besides these normal feathers there are several modifications for special pur- poses ; filoplumes, with slender axis and rudimental barbs, are often merely for ornament, while the hair-like vibrissa?, which have no barbs at all, line the mouths of many insect- eating birds, and the eyelids of many birds of prey, toucans, and ostriches. " Some plumes have the barb-tips breaking off as dust (powder-down), and these may be scat- tered (and transitory, as in the laeiumergeier), or dorsal, or on each side of the spinal tract (some kites) ; or post-femoral and inguinal (herons, Leptosoma, tinamous)." We may also mention the so-called semiplum.es, feathers intermediate between contour feathers and down, and occupying the edges of the feather-tracts ; in the hoatzin the apteria are nearly filled with them, and Garrod asks why they may not be regarded as degenerated feathers ; they are usually concealed by the contour feathers, but long semiplumes are found in some forms, as, for instance, the ornamental feathers in the Marabou stork (^Leptoptilos dubius). Feathers, generally, do not, like hairs, continue to grow indefinitely. Where they have attained their full size, the vascular papilla enclosed in the quill dries up, forming the ' pith,' and from that moment no further growth, nor any renewing of tissue, takes place in the feather. Therefore, as soon as the feathers are worn out, they are thrown off, shed, and replaced by an outgrowth of new ones. This process, which we call molting, presents some variations and modifications in the different groups of birds, but may, as a rule, be said to take place annually after the breeding season, with its wear and tear to the feathers, is over. During this general molt, all the feathers, including wing and tail feathers, are shed gradually, and equally, on both sides of the median line of the body ; the feather of one wing is thrown off simultaneously with the corresponding one of the other, and the same relation takes place in the molt of the feathers in each half of the tail. It is the exception, when ducks and some other birds lose all the wing feathers at once, thus being deprived of the power of flight for a short time. While wing and tail feathers are only molted once a year, a partial molt of the smaller feathers often takes place early in spring, at which time also most of the ornamental feathers, borne only a short time, make their appearance. This renewal of a part of the plumage is generally very rapid, and the time between the autumnal total molt and the partial one in spring, as a rule, perhaps, shorter than between the spring and the autumn changes, sometimes being often a brief period of INTRODUCTION. 5 a few weeks, as in the eiders (Somat&rice)^ but we have, on the other hand, examples of the reverse, as in the ptarmigans (Lag opus), some of which, at least, show the peculiarity of a permanent molt during the whole summer. Many birds retain the first plumage during the first winter of their life, while others change it a short time after they have put it on ; and in some for instance, in the grouse family even the wing-feathers are shed before the first winter sets in. Very frequently the new plu- mage has a color quite different from the one which was thrown off, and particularly where two molts occur, the seasonal change in the color of many birds is thus accounted for. But there are a whole category of cases in which a radical change in the coloration according to season is effected without the feathers being molted. In many birds, notably among the Passeres, the feathers of the new autumnal plumage will be seen to be parti-colored, the centre being of a hue different from that of the edge. Let us examine the fall plumage, for instance, of the adult common snow- bunting (Plectrophanes nivalis). The general color is white, the back, however, spotted with black, and parts of the plumage, especially the head, suffused with brownish ; looking closer at the individual feathers, we find that those on the back are really black, with broad white margins, while the white feathers of the head are tipped with brownish. These edges and borders become very brittle towards the approach of next year's breeding season ; they fall off, leaving the black feather-centres of the back and the pure white part of the other feathers exposed, so that the bird next sum- mer appears white, with black back. It is a similar process which changes the appear- ance of the bobolink (Dolichonyx, oryzivorus)^ besides that of numerous other birds, so radically. Changes in color may also take place between the molts and independent of the edge-shedding. In most birds the color of the plumage changes notably towards the end of the breeding season : wing-feathers which formerly were black become light brownish or grayish, vivid colors become dull, and a general fading seems to take place, caused by the wear and tear, rubbing, direct influence of the atmosphere, of rain, and of sunshine, or, as \ve are accustomed to call it, by abrasion. But the colors may also be intensified, or even radically changed, by abrasion, provided the super- ficial layers which rub off are of such a nature as to conceal or obscure the deeper and differently colored strata. We may mention the common red-poll (Acanthis liiiaria) as an example. It is but fair to confess, however, that our knowledge of the change of color in the individual feather, after having finished its growth, is still very defective, and that we have to look toward future investigations for answers to many a question. The same remark applies to our knowledge of the pigments in feathers Avhich produce the colors. A coloring matter which is called zoomelanin, and thought to be identical with coriosulphurine, seems to produce all the black and dark hues in birds, while some green colors are due to an admixture of a yellowish pigment called psittacofulvine. A really green pigment has only been found in the touracos, hence the name turacoverdin, and no blue or violet pigment has yet been dis- covered, while red (zooerythrine) is quite common. Another red, turacin, causes the magnificent red on the wings of the Musophagida?. There is no white pigment, but wherever that color occurs it is due to the countless number of interstices between the molecules of the feather, the substance of the latter being colorless. Many tints - for example, blue, violet, and certain greens are not due to the pigment, which is black-brown to yellow, but the blue results from a particular surface-structure of the feathers, so that it must disappear if the color-producing parts be destroyed. Thus, if 6 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. we hammer carefully the deep blue feathers of a macaw, the blue color immediately dis- appears, and the injured part looks gray or brownish, according to the underlying pig- ment. Some green parrot feathers, when treated in a similar way, become yellow, since this is the color of their pigment. Here we have the explanation of the dark appearance of the abraded parts of feathers of parrots and other brightly colored birds. The gloss of feathers, independent of the color itself, is the result of their surface being smooth and polished, while the metallic lustre is due to a transparent sheath which acts like a prism, a fact ascertained by Mr. Gadow. The theory of the metallic lustre being due to structure of a prismatic nature originated, however, with Professor B. Altum. We mentioned above that the seasonal shedding of feathers or of their edges usually causes a change in the color of the plumage. In some birds we distinguish summer and winter plumages, in others nuptial and post-nuptial garbs, and in some ptarmigan may be observed even four more or less distinct attires nearly corresponding to the four seasons. There are also some interesting relations connected with the similarity and dissimi- larity in color between the two sexes, and between the adults and the young. Though it might seem to be the original arrangement, or perhaps just, therefore, young birds and the adults of both sexes and at all seasons are comparatively seldom quite alike. The Procellaridw, or petrels, may be quoted as an example, besides several others. If the adults of both sexes, for some reason or another, haA r e developed alike seasonal colors, the first plumage of the young is very often like that which the parents assume about the same time, that is to say, their post-nuptial or winter dress. In such a case the young birds undergo a change in the spring similar to that of the old ones ; many of the auks (Alcidoe) demonstrate this rule. Whenever one of the adults, no matter what sex, is more richly colored than its mate, the young usually resemble tin- more plainly colored of the parents ; this rule is followed by a great many, perhaps the majority of birds, but exceptions and many modifications occur. We are, how- ever, justified in making this generalization, that species in which both parents differ materially from the plumage of the young are still more specialized as to color than the foregoing categories ; for we may without hesitation take for granted that the plumage of the young is the more generalized, and that the amount of specialization is in proportion to the departure from the first garb. It follows that we have to go to the birds in the later plumage, or in that more like it, whenever we wish to ascertain the relationship of different forms. It will, therefore, be necessary to arrange the species according to the characters furnished by the young, or plain-colored females, and not by the secondary, often highly specialized, structure of the males, if we aim at a natural classification based upon affinities. It will seem as if there may be a possibility of finding out the relation between the different classes of plumages, so that it might be deduced whether one kind of plumage in a given case for instance, a barred or spotted one is a more specialized condition than another, say a striped or plain dress ; but no investigations, covering a sufficient number of species of all orders and from all parts of the world, have been made as yet, without which all generaliza- tions and speculations are premature and next to valueless. Finally, we have to consider a color problem which has only come forward of late, and which still awaits its solution. There has been invented a name for the phenom- enon, and we are accustomed to call it dichromatism, but of its true nature and its INTRODUCTION. 7 significance in the animal economy we are quite ignorant. By this term we designate the peculiarity in certain species of birds, that individuals present t\vo different styles of coloration, or ' phases,' presumably more or less independent of geographical dis- tribution, present or past, or, in fact, of any apparent cause whatsoever. The difficulty in finding a plausible theory is much increased by the circumstance that there are nearly as many kinds of dichromatism as there are dichromatic species. We shall mention a few examples. It has been known that the so-called Richardson's jjcger (Stercorarius parasiticus) appears in two different styles, one uniformly sooty all over, the other with the whole under side white. At one time they were regarded as different species, while some observers thought that the difference was a sexual one ; but it is now demonstrated beyond doubt that the white and the dark bird are only individual phases of the same species, irrespective of sex or locality. It is interesting to remark that the closely allied species 8. longicaudus has only one, the light phase. The relation between the common and the spectacled murre ( Uria troile and ringvici) seems to be somewhat similar, the latter having a white ring round the eye and a post- ocular stripe which is wanting in the former, a strong argument being the relative paucity of the spectacled form, in connection with the fact that it does not occur in any locality where the plain-colored one is not found. A more striking and also more puzzling example of dichromatism is exhibited by several members of the heron family, a question which has been particularly studied by Mr. R. Ridgway. Already Peale's egret and Wtirdeman's heron have disappeared, as separate species, from the lists of North American birds. It is regarded as proven that the former is only a white phase of the reddish egret (Dichromanassa ritfa, the generic name of which has been given according to this view) ; for, according to Ridgway, in Florida, where they breed abundantly, both forms have been found in the same nest, attended by parents either both reddish, both white, or one in each of these stages of plumage, other circumstances at the same time leading to the conclusion that the two phases are not only not specifically distinct, but that they have nothing to do with either sex, age, or season. In the little blue heron (Florida coerulea) the facts are still more con- vincing; for here the white phase is seldom, if ever, perfectly developed in the adults, while intermediate specimens are much more numerous. The question is considerably more complicated when we come to the great white and the great blue herons of this country. We shall state the facts briefly, first giving a clue to the different forms, which may be distinguished thus: / Ardea occidentalis, white all over. Legs olive; size larger, ) Ardea wurdemanni, parti-colored; occiput and plumes white. ( Ardea wardi. ) T 11 i 11 f parti-colored; occipital streak and plumes black. Legs black; size smaller, Ardea herodias, ) * No white phase of herodias is as yet known, which seems rather strange when we consider that Ardea wardi, which is almost an exact counterpart of A. herodias, except in the coloration of the legs and the size, is matched so absolutely by A. occi- dentalis, as far as structure is concerned, that the two could not possibly be told apart if the colored bird be bleached so as to become pure white. The same may be said of A. wurdemanni, and we might be led to suppose a kind of trichromatism, the white occidentalis with two different colored phases, were it not for the fact that the type specimen of A. wurdemanni is still unique, and therefore most probably nothing more than an individual variety, or an adolescent bird not having yet lost the last traces of 8 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. the young plumage. Candor compels us to state, however, that the evidence for the white and the colored birds being only phases is yet insufficient, the more so as geo- graphical distribution seems to have something to do with the matter, for it is stated that, in Florida, the white birds are confined mainly to the Atlantic coast, while the colored ones chiefly inhabit the Gulf side. The example from the herons can be nearly duplicated by the status of some forms of fulmars from the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans, although in this case the geographical distribution seems to lie a moment of still greater importance, for I think I have proved that, in both oceans, the dark phases are predominant to the westward. We have other examples of dichroma- tism in the same group as the dark and the white form of Ossifraya yiyantea ; and Mr. Ridgway's suggestion, that it will be found more extensively all through the super- family of the Tubinares or Proeellaroideae, is well worth consideration. Dichroma- tism among the owls, or erythrochroism, as it is here called, because of rufous being the color producing one of the phases, is not uncommon, but seems to be still more influenced by the geographical distribution, at least in our little screech owl (Mega- scops asio), which, in the Mississippi Valley, has more rufous than gray individuals, in the Atlantic states both phases nearly equally represented, while west of an'd includ- ing the Rocky Mountains, only gray birds occur. Want of space compels us to pass in silence many more examples, for instance, the white and the blue-winged snow- geese, the dark and light-colored phases of many hawks (JButeones), but we cannot dis- miss this matter without having mentioned that most perplexing question to American ornithologists: What are the relations of the two forms of flickers (Cohiptes) and their numerous intermediate individuals? The two flickers are mainly characterized by the color of the under surface of the wing and tail feathers, these being red in the red-shafted (Colaptes mexicanus), gamboge yellow in the yellow-shafted flicker (C. ax- ratus), in addition to which the latter has a red nuchal crescent; besides, the males are distinguished by having a malar stripe, which is red in the red-shafted species, but black in the other; the former is chiefly a western bird, the latter inhabits the east and the north. Hardly two species could look more distinct than the typical specimens of these remarkable birds ; but the characters are mixed in every possible degree in the individuals inhabiting the region intermediate between the two, to such an extent as to be completely without parallel among birds. They were generally declared to be hybrids until intermediate specimens were found in localities for example, Florida - where only one of the typical species occur, and, consequently, hybridity is an impos- sibility. Are they incipient species? are they local varieties? or what? As there are no structural characters involved, the question is merely one of color ; why then not seek refuge in l dichromatism ' or rather ' trichromatism,' affected by geographical dis- tribution, it is true, but not in the usual way, as there are geographical sub-species of the common kind besides. We shall not attempt a solution here, but would like to put the question thus : Why may not the birds with red crescent and red moustache (this probably being the most numerous form of the so-called ' hybrid us'), be the original stock, which, westward, became modified into mexicanus, eastward into auratus, the isolated individuals, with mixed characters, being due to atavism, or occa- sional outbreak of the characters of the original stock, Avhile a great many of the mixed individuals from the intermediate region might be regarded as products of hybridization? In other words, why not a trichromatism on the verge of forming- three different species, or two if as would be expected the original (intermediate) stock died out at last? A point which seems to strengthen such a view is the fact INTRODUCTION. 9 that there exists another yellow-shafted species with red mystacal stripe and red nuchal crescent, viz., Colaptes chrysoides. If this theory be correct, we would have a c-lew to another class of dichromatic species, viz., those which now are stereotyped into two invariable forms or species, separated geographically, but still identical in structure. We shall only mention an example recently brought forward by Mr. Ridgway, that of the scarlet and the white ibises (Guam rubra and alba), of which he very character- istically remarks that they are now so different in color that probably nobody would deny their specific distinction, though structurally so alike that a specimen of the white one dyed scarlet would be indistinguishable from G. rtibra. The question which finally impresses itself upon the inquirer, in view of the above facts, is this: Are not the two or tln-ee 'phases 'of dichromatic or trichromatic species 'incipient species,' the final fate of which will be that of the white and the scarlet ibises? We have enlarged considerably upon this subject, because it is one of the most perplexing, and, consequently, most interesting questions in modern ornithology. It shows what we know, and particularly what we do not know ; it shows that ornithology means more than a mere description and naming of birds, that one of its aims is to con- tribute to the solution of the great problem of the age : " The origin of species." Besides feathers, AVC recognize in birds other epidermal appendages, as the horny sheaths of the beak, the teeth in some extinct forms, the scaly covering of the feet, spurs, and nails. Most of these different structures will be more advantageously treated of in other connections, and under the head of such groups in which they may be of special interest, although we wish here to call attention to the fact that parts of the horny beak and the nails of the toes may be shed in a way analogous to that of the molt of the feathers, referring, as we do, to the deciduous nature of the basal parts of the bill in several members of the auk family (puffins and dwarf-auks), to the ' centre- board' of the white pelican's bill, and to the seasonal claw-molt in the grouse-family, particularly the ptarmigans. The most primitive form of the horny covering of the feet seems to be its division into uniform hexagonal scales, and is called reticulate ; the next stage is when some of these scales fuse together, forming what is termed scuta, or scutella, which particularly cover the anterior part of the tarsus and the upper sur- face of the toes ; still further specialization is indicated by the tarsal scuta fusing into a continuous covering which, in its extreme development, embraces both the front and the back of the tarsus, as in some of the higher group of passerine birds ; such a tarsus is said to be ' booted.' It has already been remarked that the skin has no sudoriferous glands nor sebaceous follicles; but we cannot dismiss the dermal system before having mentioned the bilobed oil-gland placed at the base of the tail-feathers on the ' pope's nose,' and seldom miss- ing, as it is in the ostriches and some few other birds. When 'preening' their feathers, birds press the fatty substance out of this oil-box with their beaks, and by passing each feather between the mandibles, anoint the whole plumage in order to keep it in repair and protect it against getting wet, as particularly noticeable in water birds. Turning now to the other structural systems of the bird's body, it is not our inten- tion to enlarge upon or even mention such general features as are. regularly found in the text-books, only those being deemed worth our attention, in the- present connection, Avhich are of particular importance for an intelligent understanding of modern orni- thological classification, or questions which at present are most occupying the lovers of our beautiful science. 10 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. The different bones of the head anchylose very early, it being a distinctive char- acter of all living birds to possess a continuous skull-case without sutures; but it must be borne in mind that we know of an extinct group of birds, the Gastornithes, in which the sutures were permanent. Notwithstanding a general uniformity in the bird cranium, certain variations of the osteological structure, particularly of the palate and the base of the skull, have of late obtained a great prominence as systematic characters by the investigations of Professor Huxley, and his famous classification of the birds based upon them. Although not prepared to attach so great an importance to these features as has been at- tributed to them by many ornithologists, we will have to pay special attention to them, as in many cases they play a role in the ornithological classification similar to that of the teeth in mammals. Professor Huxley distinguished four different types of the palate, which he has called dromceognathous, schizo- ynathous, desmognathous, and tvyithoynatlious, and Pro- fessor Parker has separated a fifth type, which he styles saurognathous. Referring for explanation to the accom- panying cuts, which will give the desired information much easier than the best description, we abstain from any detailed account, only calling attention in a few words to the most salient features. Fig. 2 represents the dromrcognathous structure of the palate, as found in the emu and, with some modifications, in the other ostriches and the tinamous. In these, to use Huxley's own words, "the posterior ends of the palatines (pi) and the anterior ends of the pterygoids (pt) are very imperfectly, or not at all, articulated with the basi-sphe- noidal rostrum (-ft), being usually separated from it, and sup- ported, by the broad, cleft, hinder end of the vomer " (vo). The rest of the birds, consequently, have the palatine and pterygoid bones articulating with the sphenoidal rostrum, and not borne up by the posterior ends of the vomer. The arrangement illus- trated by Fig. 3 is the one called desmognathous, since the maxillo-palatines (mxp) are united medially in the palate (des- mos, a bond), the vomer, at the same time being rudimentary, or quite absent, as, for instance, in ducks, flamingos, herons, cor- morants, pelicans, birds of prey, parrots, cuckoos, etc. Fig. 4 shows a palate quite different. Here is a cleft between the maxillo-palatines (ma-p), and another between them and tlie vomer (vo), hence the name schizognathous (schizo, I cleave) ; but, in addition to this, the character of the vomer, being pointed in front, is essential, since by this mark the true schi/o- gnathous birds, for instance, the penguins, auks, gulls, snipes, fowls, grouse, pigeons, etc., are separated from another great group of birds, which have the palate " aegithognathous, or sparrow-like, for in these, as exemplified by FIG. 2. Under view of the skull of the emu (Dromseognathous); bptp, basipterygoid process of the sphe- noid; mxp, maxillo-palatine; pi, palatine ; pm.r, prsemaxilla ; pt, pterygoid; TO, vomer; It, basisphe- noidal rostrum. pmx FlG. 3. Under view of the skull of a cormorant (Des- mognathous). The letters as before. INTRODUCTION. 11 FlG. 4. Under view of the skull of the ea|ierc;illie (schizognathous). The letters as before. Fig. 5, we also find the maxillo-palatines (myp) separate medially and from the vomcr (ro), but the latter is truncate in front and cleft behind, embracing the basisphenoitl rostrum (72) between its forks. Finally, the saurognathous pal- ate, which is peculiar to the super-family Picoideoe, is particu- larly remarkable for having the t\vo lateral halves of the vomer separate. It may be well, however, to state that these characters are by no means always very trenchant, as two types often inter- grade insensibly, while in other cases we find them sharply ex- pressed in nearly related forms, as an example of which we shall only mention the closely allied genera Meyalaima and Tcf- ragonops, besides several of the birds of prey. The anterior nostrils are situated at the base of the beak (except in some Struthious birds, for example, Apteryx, in which they open near its tip), and may have a well-defined and rounded hinder edge, a condition called holorhinal by Pro- fessor Garrod, or be prolonged backwards as a fissure, when the term schizorhinal is used. A peculiar feature of the bird's beak is the flexibility of its union to the frontals by the long nasals and frontal processes of the premaxilla? ; this is carried to an extreme in the parrots, in which the connection between the beak and the forehead is formed by a movable joint. The two halves of the lower jaw anchylose early, except in some fossil forms, and the sym- physis (and consequently the gonys) is of very varying length. None of the recent birds have teeth in their jaws, and this negative character was a long time regarded as distinctive of the class, as compared with the great ma- jority of reptiles and mammals. Rudimentary teeth have lately been demonstrated in the grooves of the lower jaw of the embryonic penguin. It is also claimed that rudiments of teeth, in sockets and covered by den- tine, have been found in embryos of parrots. Late in- vestigations have failed to discover the dentine. Uesidcs, important groups of fossil birds have of late been dis- covered, which were more or less richly supplied with teeth; as, for instance, Archceopteryx, JLaopteryx, Gas- tornis, Argillornis, Jlesperornis, Ichthyornis ; the last had teeth in sockets, while those of lfc*j>< :r<-ii!.^ were fixed in grooves, and were shed in a similar way to those of the reptiles. The "saddle-shaped" vertebra is peculiar to the bird FIG. 5. -Under view of the skull of a class ' tnat is to sav > the vnst majority of living birds have !e^Isbefoi h e? gnathous) ' The the antesacral vertebra saddle-shaped, a form not seen elsewhere ; but opisthocoelian vertebra? may occasionally occur, being even the rule among the penguins, while biconcave or amphierelian verte- bra?, such as we find in fishes and many batrachians and reptiles, particularly fossil forms, are one of the most remarkable features of the extinct Arch <>j>f< ri/.<\ /rhfhi/ortti'x, . !/>nx has the gizzard provided with "four crushing-pads, instead of two, as in all other birds, including even Treron" Of the genus Carpophaga, two species, litnins and yoUatli, have the epithelial lining of the gizzard developed into a number of bony conical processes, like the spines of certain sea-urchins, while no other species of the genus are known to show any trace of such a structure. The birds are the first class of existing vertebrates with a complete double circu- lation, a four-chambered heart, with two entirely separate halves, and a blood of a temperature considerably higher than that of the surrounding atmosphere, ranging as it does from 100 to 112 Fahr. We say "existing vertebrates," for there seems to be reason to suppose that the Pterosaurians, the remarkable extinct gro'up of flying reptiles, also had hot blood, and we said ''considerably higher than that of the sur- rounding atmosphere," because there are well-known examples of fishes and reptiles, the temperature of which is higher than the medium they live in, though not to such a degree as in birds and mammals. Only a single permanent aortic trunk carries the blood from the heart, not two as in reptiles; but contrary to what takes place in mam- mals it is the right aortic arch which remains. Of special interest is the arrangement of the carotids, which carry the arterial blood to the head and neck, since their arrangement is widely different in different birds. Without going into detail we may say that the chief difference consists in the absence or presence of the right carotid. 16 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. The comparatively smaller number of birds possess the original arrangement of two distinct carotids, one right and one left, since in all the Passeres and a number of other groups the left only is preserved, which, however, branches off before reaching the head, thus performing the duty of both carotids. So radical this difference may seem at first sight, so unreliable are the characters furnished by it as indicating relation- ship, that it is altogether out of the question to use it as a means of primary division. For, while it is true that all Passeres that is to say, all that have been examined, and many are still to be investigated-- have only the more specialized arrangement indicated by the presence of the left carotid only, we find in other groups nearly related forms, with one or two carotids, as, for instance, among the auks, the parrots, and the herons. In nearly all birds the crural artery is derived from the sciatic, and the chief vein of the legs, the femoral ; and only in a few passerine forms, the Pipras and the Cotingas, is the artery of the thigh formed by the femoral artery. During incubation the vessels of the abdominal wall dilate enormously, forming the so-called brood-organ. The blood corpuscles of birds are, on the average, of a size twice those of man, and the shape of the red ones is oblong as are those of reptiles, while in most mammals they are round. Very characteristic, though not absolutely peculiar to birds, as we have seen above, is their pneumacity, several of their bones being hollow, and connected by openings with air-sacs, which again communicate with the lungs ; by this, air is distributed all through the body, even to the interior of the bones. The enormous importance of this feature to creatures destined to inhabit the air will be readily understood when we learn that a bird with a specific gravity of 1.30 may have this reduced to only 1.05 by pumping itself full of air. The lungs themselves are two rather large sacs wedged in around the vertebrae and the heads of ribs, not free, nor enclosed in a pleura, as in mammals. The voice of birds is generally thought not to be formed in the larynx, as it is in mammals, but in a separate, and to the class quite peculiar, " lower larynx," the so-called syrinx, usually situated at the lower end of the trachea, or between it and the bronchi, though the correctness of this view concerning the formation of the voice has been recently seriously questioned. The syrinx consists of a modification of the cartilaginous and coalescent rings, forming a tympanic chamber, in the middle of which occurs a vertical membranous fold, the free edge of which is called the semilunar membrane, while on each side is attached another free-edged membrane ; the voice is formed by the air causing these membranes to vibrate when forced out through the slits between the central and the lateral membranes. Intrinsic muscles run from the trachea to the bronchial rings, and are supposed to serve in varying the tension of the membrane. The peculiar arrangement of these muscles, and their importance to systematic ornithology, will be more fully treated of under the introduction to the order Passeres. The syrinx is not absent in any known bird, though somewhat rudi- mentary in some Struthious birds, and still more so in some of the Cathartidse. The anatomical investigations of later years have added very little to our knowledge of the neural system of birds and of the organs of sense, having been directed mostly to those features which seemed to promise greater results in the study of the affinities, the morphological development, and the systematic arrangement, thus leaving nothing of general interest to be added to what is contained in the ordinary text-books. There is another question which is just now occupying the studies and thoughts of ornithologists, and which therefore cannot be passed by in the present work, namely the question of the migration of birds. INTRODUCTION. 17 Taking it for granted that all our readers know what is understood by the migration of birds, the regular travel towards the north in spring, and the regular return in fall towards the south, of certain birds, and also what is understood by the term a permanent resident, we will at once remark that there is no fundamental difference between the categories, since perhaps the greater part of the permanent residents travel about more or less extensively during the cold season, and the range of migra- J ^j ^j O tion of many so-called migrating species is very limited, while not a few are residents in one country, though migrating in other localities, as for instance, the meadow lark, the purple grackle, the bluebird, etc. A moment's reflection will therefore convince us that the migrating state has developed in originally sedentary birds. The next thing to take into consideration is the fact that it is not the cold that C7 drives the migratory birds away in fall, since other birds equally equipped stand the climate very well, and remain in the country the migrants left ; the only reason why the latter go is because they are in some way or another deprived of the special food upon which their existence depends. The fact is simply that they have the choice either to go or to starve. It is also clear that they will generally not go farther than is absolutely necessary. The residents, on the other hand, are able to stay, because their principal food is to be had at all seasons in the region where they are born. It is furthermore evident, from what daily experience teaches us, that no life-sustain- ing possibility is left unoccupied by nature, so that when she opens a new field where a living can be made, there the invitation to immigrate is at once accepted. Birds organized like those of which we said above that the approaching winter gives them the choice between going away or starving, but which only go so far as barely neces- sary, would be the first ones to avail themselves of the abundance of food in their old quarters with the returning summer. A conjectural case will help to elucidate the above remarks. Suppose, then, that the bluebird originally inhabited a great area having a uniform climate enabling the individuals throughout the range of the species to find their food all the year round, they would then be sedentary over the whole area. Suppose the climate became gradually colder in winter at the northern border, suspending insect life during a part of the year. Those living in that region would have to go or starve, and it cannot be doubted that those going in the right direction - viz. southward and they only, would survive, while the rest would be killed. The next year the survivors will return and breed, and again only the travelers going soulh will save their lives. We can now understand how a migratory habit might originate ; and as we know that habits easily become hereditary when necessary for the preserva- tion of the species, we are compelled to concede that the so-called " instinct of migra- tion is nothing but a hereditary habit forced upon certain kinds of birds by ' natural selection.' ' But it will be seen that the result may be the same if we reverse our conjecture, and suppose that a bird for example, the nightingale originally inhabited a rather restricted area, which subsequently became extended for a part of the year, the summers of the adjacent territory gradually becoming inhabitable ; the result would be the same. The theory, thus far, looks acceptable; the question is now whether sufficient evidence can be had to make it probable that such conditions as those supposed above have actually existed, in answer to which I shall quote the following from Professor J. A. Allen's pen : " In reference to this point, let us revert for a moment to the geological history of North America. Nothing is doubtless more thoroughly estab- VOL. IV. 2 18 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. lished than that a warm-temperate or sub-tropical climate prevailed, down to the close of the tertiary epoch, nearly to the northern pole, and that climate was previously everywhere so far equable that the necessity of migration can hardly be supposed to have existed. With the later refrigeration of the northern regions, bird life must have been crowded thence toward the tropics, and the struggle for life, therefore, greatly intensified. The less yielding forms may have become extinct ; those less sensitive to climatic change would seek to extend the boundaries of their range by a slight removal northward during the milder intervals of summer, only, however, to be forced back again by the recurrence of winter. Such migration must have been, at first, incipient and gradual, extending and strengthening as the cold wave receded and opened up a wider area within which existence in summer became possible. What was at first a forced migration would become habitual, and, through the heredity of habit, give rise to that wonder- ful faculty we term the instinct of migration." While we thus feel justified in accepting the theory as applicable to North America, similar evidence can be had from the Old World, only that the phenomenon here is somewhat different, and more con- formable to the second supposition mentioned above. It is probably safe to say that northern and central Europe during the glacial period were inhabited by few if any birds, while most of those which now live there were crowded together in the warmer regions to the south of the Alps. They have consequently im- migrated to their present home from marine- the south, gradually, as the ice re- ceded and the summers made the countries inhabitable, but were driven back every winter when the cold reduced the insect-life, and covered the fields with snow and the waters with ice. We are now prepared to accept the theory that the regular habit is due to ' natural selection ' caused by the forced immigration or emigration according to change of climate during earlier geological periods. Here is an appropriate place to consider for a few moments a painstaking work, which started a new era in this branch of ornithology, viz., the book " On the Migrat- ing Routes of Birds," by Dr. J. A. Palm.cn, the genial Finnish zoologist. Earlier authors had been aware that some birds followed well-defined and rather narrow paths while traveling to or from their summer homes, and Professor Suudevall had already in detail laid down the route of the common European crane (Grus grus); but not before 1874, when Palmen published his book, was it made evident that most migrating birds travel along geographically defined routes which do not follow one FlG. C. Diagram showing the main migrating routes of the lit- toral (except fluvio-littoral) birds in Europe. _ and submarine-littoral migrants, e.g. the razor-bill and the divers pelago- and glacial-littoral migrants, e.g. the common eider and the king eider. INTR OD UCTION. 19 single direction of the compass, and that the birds usually do not travel in the region lyino- between these high-roads. He furthermore demonstrated that the routes of the water-birds chiefly follow the coast, or, where they cross the continents, along the large inland watercourses, and admirably mapped the Old World routes of the "littoral mi- grants," as he termed them, the preceding chart (Fig. 6.) giving an idea of the plan. Lookino- at this map, two features strike us at first as difficult to understand, viz., the distinct routes across the open ocean, for example, the routes A, B, and A*; us also the crossing of the Mediterranean at certain points, which, besides, are not always the shortest distance between the two continents. We might also think it strange that marine birds should go inland as indicated by the routes C and D. In order to explain this, we have again to go back to an earlier geological period, in fact, to the time when the migration originated. In re- irard to the first kind of routes O those across the open ocean we can do nothing better than transcribe Wal- lace's remarks, which are as follows : "Migrations of this type probably date back from at least the period when there was continuous land along the route passed over ; and it is a suggestive fact that this land connection is known to have existed in recent geo- logical times. Britain was O connected with the continent during, and probably before the glacial epoch, and Gib- raltar, as well as Sicily, and Malta, were also recently un- ited with Africa, as is proved by the fossil elephants and other large Mammalia found in their caverns, by the comparatively shallow waters still existing in this part of the Mediterranean, while the remainder is of oceanic profundity, and the large amount of identity in the species of land animals still inhabiting the opposite shores of the/ Mediterranean. The submersion of these two tracts of land would be a slow process, and from year to year the change might be hardly percep- tible. It is easy to see how the migration that had once taken place over continuous land would be kept up, first over lagoons and marshes, then over a narrow channel, and subsequently over a considerable sea, no one generation of birds ever perceiving any difference in the route." The distribution of land and water, as alluded to by Wallace, is indicated on the accompanying sketch-map (Fig. 7.) by the dotted lines which represent the 100 and 500 fathom lines ; a comparative glance upon the two maps obviates any further expla- nations of the routes A, J5, and A" The conclusion is obvious that the oceanic routes FlG. 7. Diagram showing the depth of the seas surrounding Europe. is the 100 fathom line; is the 500 fathom line. The areas on the present land included within the dotted line '\vere sub- merged at uo time during the glacial period. 20 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. indicate the ancient coast-lines along which the birds originally migrated, and further- more, that they show the ways by which the species immigrated into the countries where they now pass the summer. This conclusion, however, is also applicable to the land routes C and I). The o-eological history of that part of the earth shows most conclusively that the great Russian and the central European low-lands, during a not very distant period, geolo- o-ically speaking, were submerged, forming the bottom of a rather shallow sea, the shores of which, at different times, are well indicated by the lines alluded to. Even when crossing the continents, the migrating routes of marine birds indicate ancient coast-lines, and the immigration-road of the species inhabiting the north. We note how closely these results agree with those arrived at above, where theorizing about the origin of the migrating habit. Having thus accounted for the theory as first proposed by Palmen, and nearly simultaneously by Wallace, it remains to be shown how the birds are enabled to find their way, often thousands of miles. We need not assume a miraculous or imperative instinct, nor a sixth sense, nor the influence of terrestrial magnetism, in order to explain the remarkable fact that small birds travel over large continents and vast seas twice a year to and from the very spot where they were born. Practice is the mysterious agent, though not only the practice of the individual, but the practice of the' species, the accumulated practice of thousands of generations, originating and strengthening the faculty of orientation. "It is an ascertained fact" says Wallace, "that many individual birds return year after year to build their nests in the same spot. This shows a strong local attachment, and is, in fact, the faculty of feeling, on which then- very existence probably depends. For were they to wander at random each year, they would, almost certainly, not meet with places so well suited to them, and might even get into districts where they or their young would inevitably perish. It is also a curious fact that in so many cases the old birds migrate first, leaving the young ones behind, who follow some short time later, but do not go so far as their parents. This is very strongly opposed to the notion of an imperative instinct. The old birds have been before, the young have not, and it is only when the old ones have all or nearly all gone, that the young go too, probably following some of the latest stragglers. They wander, however, almost at random, and the majority are destroyed before the next spring. This is proved by the fact that the birds which return in spring are as a rule not more numerous than those which came the preceding spring, whereas those which went away in autumn were two or three times as numerous. Those young birds that do get back, however, have learnt by experience, and the next year they take care to go with the old ones." Taking into account the " inherited talent for geography," as Weissmann happily styles it, with which every migratory bird is born, and remembering that the birds, when traveling, fly very high, and consequently overlook a great distance of their route, taking a 'bird's-eye view' of the country spread out beneath them, their performance is scarcely more wonderful than is that of the pilot who safely guides tin- vessel for hundreds and hundreds of miles along rocky shores and islands, all of which seem identical and indistinguishable to the inexperienced passer-by; or more admir- able than the infallibility with which the Indian finds his way back, even if he has passed that way but once, through an endless forest of trees, which to any of us seem to be absolutely alike. LEOXHARD STE.TNEGEK. BIRDS WITH TEETH. 21 SUB-CLASS I. ORDER I. ORNITHOPAPPI. In 1861 Hermann von Meyer, the distinguished palajontologist, described a bird's feather found in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen, in Bavaria, belonging to the upper Jurassic deposits. To the bird revealed by this feather, he gave the name of Archceopteryx lithographies. The discovery was received with some incredulity, but doubts were soon dispelled by Professor Owen's memoir in 1863. Herein he described a slab found in the same deposits, which showed with remarkable clearness the hind- quarters of the bird, which he rechristened Griphornis macrurus, a name he afterwards abandoned. The pelvis, the legs, and the long tail furnished with feathers, were splen- didly preserved ; but, except the wing feathers, which were disordered, and some loose and dislocated bones belonging to the anterior extremities, all the rest of the skeleton was wanting. In 1877 another slab was found, containing a second example of Archceopteryx, which in many respects supplemented the other, as it is nearly or quite complete, show- ing the head, the vertebra?, ribs, and fore extremities, while the hind parts are in a less satisfactory condition. The first specimen was bought by the British Museum in Lon- don, while the second one was secured by the museum at Berlin, Germany ; both have been examined with the utmost care by men like Richard Owen, Carl Vogt, Professor Marsh, and Dr. Liitken, and from their descriptions the present account has been compiled. The second specimen is shown in our plate. This bird is of the greatest interest on account of its age and its remarkable struc- ture ; for not only is it the oldest bird known, although the first types of this class may be expected to have originated as early as paleozoic times, but its wonderful state of preservation enables us to throw light upon the history of the reptiloid ances- tor's development into a feathered and flying bird, since in view of late discoveries it cannot be denied that we have here one of the "missing links" between the two classes, though Archceopteryx may still be regarded as belonging to the ornithic side of the boundary. The first specimen was about as large as a crow, or a peregrine falcon ; the second one is considerably larger, which may be due to sex; but I should not be surprised if they turned out to be two different species, as suggested by Professor Seeley, the Berlin specimen having relatively longer digits, forearm, and legs, with proportionally shorter feet. Carl Vogt remarks that the head is small, pyramidal, the top nearly flat, the occi- put obliquely truncated, and the orbits large. Both he and Professor Marsh found teeth actually in position, apparently in the premaxillary, as they are below or in front of the nasal aperture. The form of the teeth, both crown and root, is very similar to the teeth of Hesperornis, one of the toothed birds of the cretaceous formation. The fact that some teeth are scattered about near the jaw would suggest that they were implanted in a groove. No teeth are known from the lower jaw, but they were probably present. The presacral vertebra, apparently twenty-one in number, are all, or nearly all, biconcave, resembling in general form those of Ichthyornis, another cretaceous 22 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. bird. The sacral vertebrae are fewer in number than in any known bird, those united together probably less than five. One of the most remarkable features of the Archceopteryx is the length of the tail, which is as long as the rest of the body, consisting of twenty or twenty-one long and thin vertebrae, exactly as in the reptiles, and widely differing from all other known birds. It is in reference to this unique structure of the tail that the sub-class has been named Saururae, or lizard-tailed birds. Professor Marsh has been able to determine the presence of a single broad plate, constituting the sternum, which he thinks probably supported a keel, as the scapular arch, with its distinctly avian furculum, strongly resembles that of modern birds. The ribs are very fine, thin, curved, and pointed at the end like surgeon's needles, and show no flattening nor uncinate processes, according to Vogt ; but Dr. Liitken thinks that he observed a trace of these processes, though admitting that the ribs are remarkably thin, and unlike those of other birds. The arm proper is truly avian. Only one carpal bone seems to be present, but with that exception the hand is just what may be seen in embryonic birds of to-day, the three metacarpals being absolutely free, as in reptiles. When describing the first specimen, Professor Owen assigned four digits to it. The new one shows that this was erroneous, as it has only three long, slender digits, armed with claws, hooked and sharp-edged, on each hand ; the radial digit, or the pollex, is the shortest ; the other two are nearly equal, the second slightly the longer. The pollex is composed of a short metacarpal, a pretty long phalanx, and of a terminal claw-bearing phalanx ; the other two digits have, besides the metacarpal, three normal phalanges. The pollex was free, like the other two digits. One of the most interesting results of Professor Marsh's study of the London specimen is the determination of the separate condition of the pelvic bones, which, in all other known adult birds, recent and extinct, are firmly anchylosed, while in the young birds and in the Dinosaurians they are distinct. The thigh and leg bones do not present any peculiarity worthy of our attention in the present connection, except that the distal end of the fibula stands in front of the tibia, as in Iguanodon, but contrary to the condition in the birds. The feet do not differ essentially from those of living birds, though deep grooves between the three elements of the metatarsus seem to indicate that the metatarsals of the second, third, and fourth toes were distinct, or, at least, only imperfectly united. There remain the feathers, which, no doubt, are true bird's feathers, with a median shaft, having barbs perfectly formed. The remiges of the win^s are fixed to the ulnar edge of the arm, and to the hand; they are covered for nearly half their length with a fine filiform down. None of them project beyond the others; the wing is rounded in its outline like that of a fowl. It is possible that at the base of the neck there was a ruff, like that of the condor. Some traces of it are perhaps visible. The tibia was clothed with feathers for the whole of its length. The Archoeopteryx thus wore breeches, as do our falcons. Each caudal vertebra bore a pair of lateral rectrices, an arrangement totally different from that of all other known birds. All the rest of the body the head, neck, and trunk were apparently naked and unprovided with feathers, for no traces of either down or feathers are there to be seen ; but it must be remembered that the specimen may have been completely decom- posed before imbedded, and the small feathers or down carried away, while the larger - ' W Arch&opteryx lithographica. BIRDS WITH TEETH. 23 ones only adhered to the skeleton. The theory of the nakedness of the body, as advocated by Professor Vogt, is not very probable, in view of the fact that the thighs were feathered ; and to suppose that the rest of the body was scaly is hardly defen- sible, for we may with greater right ask where the scales are than where the feathers. The conclusion we gain from the above is that the oldest bird known was a laud- bird, and arboreal in its habits. But in spite of its feathers it can hardly have had a great resemblance to the forms which now inhabit the woods. Nor is it probable that it was a very expert flyer; the broad, rounded wings and the curious tail suggest a locomotion of a somewhat similar nature to the 'flight' of the flying squirrel, the tail of which in fact strikingly recalls that of the Archceopteryx. There have been and still are authors who regard this animal as a reptile, but apparently with no good foundation. If we accept the theory that the birds have developed from the reptiles, the transition must have been gradual and nearly imper- ceptible, so that the line to be drawn between the two classes must be more or less artificial. But if we do not accept a feathered and warm-blooded vertebrate as a bird, where then is the criterion to distinguish it from a reptile ? The Archoeopteryx was long the only Jurassic bird known. In addition to his many other discoveries of fossil birds, Professor Marsh has of late added that of an American Jurassic bird, from the Atlaittosaxms-'beds of Wyoming, a form which in 1881 he described as Laopteryx prisons. The most important specimen is the poste- rior portion of the skull, indicating a bird rather larger than a great blue heron. Professor Marsh remarks further that in its main features the type specimen resembles the skull of the Ratitre more than that of any existing birds. In the matrix attached to this skull a single tooth was found, which most resembles the teeth of birds, espe- cially those of Ichthyornis ; and Marsh thinks it probable that it belonged to Laop- teri/x, and that this bird also possessed biconcave vertebrjEe. Like Archceopteryx^ it was a land-bird. It would be futile to attempt a reconstruction of the Avhole bird from the few remnants on the old Cuvierian plan, since modern discoveries have proved the utter failure of the method. Nobody can tell how the tail of Laopteryx was formed, and when Ave place it with the Saururre, we do so because that position is as good as any other, and because its geological age probably corresponds to that of Archceopt&ryx. LEOXHARD STEJXEGER. SUB-CLASS II. ODOXTOTORM^E. ORDER L PTEROPAPPL With the exception of the Solenhofen bird, only a few scattered remains of fossil birds, save from the most recent deposits, had been found prior to those startling dis- coveries which afterwards were figured and described in Professor Marsh's famous O monograph on the extinct toothed birds of North America. Not only were the re- mains of these cretaceous birds in an unusually splendid state of preservation, but they reversed in many respects both the popular and the scientific ideas as to the charac- ters and the origin of birds. As these Odontornithes, or toothed birds, form one of the most interesting and important contributions to modern ornithological science, and as a thorough under- standing of their remarkable structure, so different from that of any living bird, is 24 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. necessary in order to obtain an intelligent idea of the state of that science, and of the class it treats of, a full account of these ancestors of the feathered tribes has been deemed desirable, and, as Professor Marsh's work is the only source of information, the following statements are given as nearly in his own words as possible. The geological horizon of the known Odontornithes is in the middle cretaceous, and corresponds to the strata named by Marsh the ' Pteranodon beds,' situated along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, and especially on the adjoining plains in Kansas and Colorado. These beds consist mainly of a fine yellow chalk and calcare- ous shale, both admirably adapted to preserve delicate specimens. The first bird fossil discovered in this region was the lower end of the tibia of Hesperornis, found bv Pro- fessor Marsh in December, 1870, near the Smoky Hill River, in western Kansas. In June, 1871, he made the discovery of the skeleton which forms the type of II. regalis. In the autumn, 1872, another skeleton of the same Avas found, and the type of the genus Apatornis. The fossil birds procured in that region between 1870 and 1880, by the different explorations, include remains of more than one hundred individuals of the toothed birds. It was soon found that these toothed birds were of two different kinds, which, although united under the common heading, Odontornithes, were more different than almost any two living birds of the present day, and which had very little in common save the teeth. But even k h %||} ^jH ("H these were extremely dif- ferent, being placed, as they were, in a continuous groove in one group, while in the other they were implanted in individual FIG. 8. Quadrate bone of Ichthyornis. Sockets. The former Were therefore styled Odonto- holcaj (from the Greek odontoi, teeth, and holkos, a groove) while the others received the name Odontotormae (odontoi, and tormos, a socket). The latter form the sub- class here under consideration. The Odontotormae, or birds with teeth in sockets, so far as now known, were all of small size, and possessed powerful wings and very small legs and feet. Some of their characters as, for instance, their vertebra?, biconcave or hollow both behind and in fi-ont separate them widely from all birds recent and extinct. The remains of this group preserved are more or less pneumatic, and this fact, in connection with their small size, is perhaps the main reason why so few have been dis- covered. As might naturally be expected, the hollow bones of flying birds, being- filled with air, enable the carcass to float upon the water much longer than it other- wise would, and it is thus liable to be destroyed by fishes or other animals. Hence, the chances of complete skeletons being buried entire are greatly diminished. The plains east of the Rocky Mountains have yielded remains of not less than seventy- seven different individuals of Odontotormae, belonging to two well-marked "genera," Ichthyornis and Apatornis, the former represented by several species (some of which Avere formerly referred to the genus Graculavus), and the latter by only one. These were all small birds, scarcely larger than a pigeon. In their powerful Avings and small legs and feet, they remind one of the terns, and, according to present evidence, they Avere aquatic birds, of similar life and habits. BIRDS WITH TEETH. 25 The skull was very large in proportion to the rest of the skeleton, the dispropor- tion being well shown in the accompanying cut, Fig. 9. The cranial sutures were nearly obliterated. The quadrate bone, as shown in Fig. 8, has only a single facet on its articular head, agreeing in that respect with Hesperornis and the Struthionine birds. The brain was small, and, like that of Hesperornis, which it resembles more nearly than that of any other known bird, in its main features strongly reptilian, as in the elongated form and the prominent optic lobes. The two rami of the lower jaw were entirely separate, having been united in front only by cartilage, and the tooth-bearing portion is so similar to that of some of the smal- ler Mosasauroid reptiles that, without other portions of the skel- eton, the two could hardly be dis- tinguished. The teeth were im- planted in distinct sockets, thus differing widely from what was the case in Hesperornis ; they were all sharp, pointed, and strongly recurved, those of the upper jaw apparently larger than the lower ones. Whether the an- terior portion of the upper jaw, the premaxilla, contained teeth is uncertain, but Professor Marsh thinks it probable that they were absent, as in Hesperornis. The whole surface of the tooth above the jaw was covered with smooth enamel. The succession of the teeth took place vertically, as in crocodiles and Dinosaurs, and not laterally, as in Hesperornis and the Mosasaurs. The young teeth were much inclined when they first appeared above the jaw, after the old teeth had been expelled. The presacral vertebras were more remarkable than those of any other known bird except Arcliwopteryx, for they were not saddle-shaped, but biconcave as shown in Fio-s. 10, 11, which show clearly the cup-shaped articulation of the centrum. However, the third vertebra of the neck, but no other, presents a modified form (Fig. 12), evidently produced by the necessity of providing for an easy vertical motion of the neck at its first bend. The tail is remarkable for being of the same type as is that of all mod- ern birds, namely, comparatively short, and the last vertebra} anchylosed into a pygostyle. The fore extremities, including the shoulder girdle, were, so far as known, essen- .-^^-~ , . .xi. ^x- .!, .; .:.-- **.< :i !. ; .. -> '''. ' , -I' i , . 1 . J>- . - . .' t ?*j- _, - _>*- ^L-i n . '.&'*:' ''-' FiG. 9. Restoration of Ichthyornis. 26 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. tinlly as in living birds, as apparently was the sternum also. Of the clavicles only a fragment of the upper end has yet been found. The wings clearly indicate very strong power of flight. The humerus had an enormous radial crest, surpassing in comparative size that of any living bird, and was placed in a plane nearly parallel with the long axis of the head of the humerus, instead of considerably inclined, as in most birds, thus strongly resembling, in these two points, the humerus in the pterodactyls, the extinct flying reptiles. The carpal bones w r ere two in number, and the metacar- pals united as usual ; a noticeable feature of the second linger is that the thin lateral expansion of the first phalanx ends in a prominent flattened, hook-like process beyond the rest of the bone. The pelvic arch exhibits some interesting reptilian characters. The sacrum con- sisted of about ten vertebras thoroughly anchylosed, as were also the pelvic bones. Of these the ischium was expanded in the middle, extended further back than the ilium, and was not united with the latter posteriorly, agreeing in that respect with Hesperornis and a few modern reptilian birds. The legs and feet do not differ more from those of modern birds than did the wings. The metatarsals are anchylosed firmly and present no peculiar features. The phalanges, with the exception of one, have not yet been found. That Ichthyornis was provided with feathers is proved beyond question by the tubercles for the attachment of quills on the forearm. It will thus be seen that Ich- FIG. 10. FIG. 11. FIG. 12. Vertebrse of Ichthyornis. tJiyornis, " the fish-bird," as it is fitly called from its fish-like vertebra?, was a remarkable combination of very old and very modern characters, biconcave vertebra? and large head with separate lower jaw and teeth, in connection with anchylosed metacarpals and metatarsals. Referring to the accompanying cut (Fig. 9), which represents Marsh's restoration of one of the species, for information concerning the general aspect of the bird, we may remark, however, that the missing parts are supplied from a tern, a rather specialized modern bird, and that consequently many features of the restoration are unreliable, while one, at least, is manifestly incorrect. For we may safely assume that Ichthyornis was holorhinal like Ilesperornis, and not schizorhinal like a tern, as repre- sented in the figure, and it seems rather strange that the head has been restored after C7 ' O the fashion of the latter, when it is admitted that it resembles that of the former "more nearly than that of any other known bird." We may, perhaps, also take excep- tion to the restoration of the neck, as not in harmony with the disproportionate large head. The gap between Ichthyornis and all other birds is very great, so it would be quite unsafe to advance any opinion as to its genesis and relationships. All that we can say at present is, that it sprung very early from the ancestral stock, preserving the primi- tive character of the vertebra? and the skull long after other parts had reached an advanced speciali/ation, thus adding new evidence to the principle, "that an animal may attain great development in one set of characters, and at the same time retain other low features of the ancestral type." BIRDS WITH TEETH. 27 SUB-CLASS III. ODOXTOHOLC^E. ORDER I. DROMyEOPAPPI. Contemporaneous with the Ichthyornis^ other toothed birds of quite different aspect and characters inhabited the same cretaceous sea which then covered the central ami western parts of our continent. The former went hovering over the waters, darting, like the terns and gulls of the present day, upon the unfortunate fishes which cami.> too near the surface ; while the type of the present sub-class, the Hesp&rornis^ or 'the western bird,' as that name literally means, followed the prey to the very bottom of the sea, in diving power and speed surpassing any other bird, living or fossil, and even more fitted for aquatic life than the penguin, as it had no wings whatsoever, and its feet were so specially modified for propelling their large bodies through the water that they could hardly move on land. We will further on have opportunity of characterizing the penguins as the seals among the birds : Hesperornis and its allies represent the dolphins. It is most fortunate for science, Professor Marsh remarks, that Hesperornis regaUs with the exception of Archceopteryx and Laopteryx, the oldest bird known should now be represented by remains as complete as any fossil skeleton yet discovered, even in the later formations, as nearly all the bones of the specimens obtained, when first found in the matrix, were almost as perfect as in life ; and the various remains belong- ing to about fifty different individuals of Hesperornis are now in the museum of Yale College. With a general superficial resemblance to that of a loon, the skull of Hesperornis, in its more important characters, approaches that of the Struthious birds, being like the latter dromasognathous, and having, like them and IchtJujornis, only one facet on the articular head of the quadrate bone. The nostrils are holorhinal. The brain-case is small, and its sutures entirely fused together. As in Ichthyornis and many recent water- birds, well-marked glandular depressions extend along the roof of the orbits. The premaxillaries were 1 elongated, forming a long, pointed beak, which in front of the nostrils was apparently covered with a horny sheath, as in modern birds. There were no teeth in these bones, as in the upper jaw they were con- fined to the maxillary bones, which were armed with (in II. regalis fourteen) teeth set in a deep, continuous groove, with only faint indications of separate sockets. The lower jaw was thickly set with teeth to the end (in regaUs thirty-three), and the two halves were separate, as in Tchthi/ornis, only united in front by ligament. The teeth, which are so reptilian in their characters that nobody would hesitate to refer them to that class, had they been found alone, were gradually replaced by successional teeth, the germ of the young tooth growing in a pit made in the old one by absorption, thus undermining and at last expelling the latter (Fig. 13). In strange contrast to Icht/iyornis, the present group of fossil birds had vertebra? resembling in their more important characters the corresponding vertebras of existing Fir,. 1.3. Tooth of Ih-sper- iix, eiil:u'L:<-il: ', germ of second tooth. 28 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. birds. Their number was about forty-nine, a high number for the class; but the most interesting part of the vertebral column is undoubtedly the tail, which was composed of the great number of twelve vertebras. The middle and posterior ones had very long and broad transverse processes, which restricted lateral motion, clearly indicating that the tail was mainly moved up and down, evidently as an aid in diving, the lateral FIG. 14. Caudal vertebrae of Hespcrornis. motion being confined to the tail as a whole, and performed between the foremost vertebras. The last three or four caudals were firmly fused together, forming a flat plate, analogous to, but quite unlike, the ploughshare bone of modern birds. Thus the tail formed a sort of an oar, similar to a beaver's tail (Fig. 14). The shoulder girdle, in its retrograde development, is particularly interesting as showing strong resemblance in many respects to that of the existing dromasognathous birds, especially when we remember that Ilesperornis itself had a palatal structure of a similar type ; for not only is the sternum devoid of a keel, but the long axes of the adjacent parts of the scapula and coracoid were parallel, or identical, as shown in the accompanying cut (Fig. 15). The breast bone was thin and weak, with a rounded mesial projection in front, corre- sponding to the manubrium; the posterior margin was quite thin, and had two shallow emarginations. The ribs show only little difference from those of modern birds, and some of them supported uncinate processes. The clavicles were sep- arate, resembling the correspond- ing bones in the embryos of some Fi<;. 15. Scapular arch of ffesperorms, reduced. modern forms. The coracoids and the scapula were quite small. The wing is represented by the rudimentary humerus alone, the other bones having become atrophied. The pelvis, though in its general form resembling that of Colymbus, exhibits many features common to that of reptiles, and of several dromreognathous living birds. Most interesting, perhaps, is that the condyloid cup of the hip-joint is closed by bone, except a foramen that perforates the inner wall, entirely unlike the acetabulum of other birds, but resembling that of the crocodiles. The three constituents of the pel- BIRDS WITH TEETH. 29 vis, which are firmly fused together, have their posterior extremities free, as in the emu and in Tinamus. As the legs of the ostriches have been extremely modified, in order to adapt them for swift movements on terra firnia, so were those of Hesperornis specialized for a life more completely aquatic than that of any known bird. Professor Marsh thinks that it might even be questioned whether it could be said to walk on land, though admit- ting that some movement on shore was a necessity. Considering the posterior limb as a whole, it will be found a nearly perfect piece of machinery for propulsion through the water. Provisions were made for a very powerful backward stroke, followed by a quick recovery, with little loss by resistance, a movement quite analogous to the strong- stroke of an oar feathered on its return. To a certain degree the legs of Hesperornis may be said to resemble those of the grebes, though the differences are both many and impor- tant. The thigh bone is shorter and stouter O than in any known aquatic bird, recent or fossil, and is very much flattened trans- versely, being considerably broader than thick. The fourth trochanter (Dollo) is plainly visible on the figure. The leg bone is much the largest bone in the skeleton ; the cnemial process rises into a powerful tuberosity above the articulation with the thigh bone. The patella, or knee-pan, is a large separate bone, perforated by a large hole for the tendon of the ambiens muscle. The second, third, and fourth metatarsals were thoroughly fused together, as in all recent birds except the penguins, but in most specimens traces of the sutures remain. The fourth metatarsal so greatly exceeded the other two in size that it forms by far the greatest part of the entire tarso-meta- FIG. 16. Kestoration of Hesper<>r>'s, a recently found, nearly perfect, egg measuring about ten inches in length by seven in breadth, or " so large that a hat would make a good egg-cup for it," but without equalling in capacity those of the In one of them the bones of a young foetus were found, from which could be demon- strated that even at that early age the bones be- . . FIG. '20. Diiiornis ingens. longing to the hind extremities were much more voluminous than in the now existing types of Struthiones. But not onlv have the bones and eggs of moas been found in great numbers, but / oo o also single feathers and parts of skeletons, with muscles, shreds of skin, and feathers adhering, in a remarkable state of preservation. Some of the feathers were as bright as if they had just been pulled out. They were double, in other words, were furnished with an ' aftershaft,' resembling some- what those of the Australian wingless birds. In one species they were of a reddish brown near the base, passing into black, while the rounded tip was pure white. Others have been found of a pale yellowish brown color, others again of a blackish brown. Feathers from a cave near Queenstown were reddish brown with a terminal dark-brown shaft streak. These large feathers (some measuring as much as six inches) probably covered the body. A most extraordinary specimen, consisting of seven vertebra? from the lower end of the neck, with their muscles, skin, and feathers, is so interesting, that we allow ourselves to make an abstract of the best description accessible to us. Upon the portion of this specimen corresponding to the first dorsal vertebra?, the skin is seen to be covered with large conical papilla? which nearly touch each other, and give the whole the appearance of a rasp. A certain number of these papilla? bear double-stemmed feathers of a reddish-chestnut color, furnished with barbs, and nearly two inches long. The papilla? diminish in size, and the feathers in length, on arriving at the level of the vertebra? of the neck. Soon the feathers appear to be 46 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. reduced to mere hairs, and they disappear entirely upon about half the specimen. There the papilla? are much smaller and are distinctly separated from each other. With the data furnished by the skeletons and the other remains now in the differ- ent museums, we are enabled to give a pretty reliable picture of these birds, which probably became extinct before civilized men discovered their native land, supplying the wanting details from their nearest allies among the living dromreognathous birds. They are described as representing the general form of the cassowary, but upon a much larger scale, particularly in regard to the hind extremities, while the anterior ones were still more abortive. Like the cassowary, they had the greater part of the neck naked, but were destitute of the bony crest, in this respect resembling the emu. Very probably the legs were naked, and the body was covered with silky plumes, in which darker or lighter and more or less reddish tints of brown predominated, varie- gated with black and white, at least in some species. To Mr. John White, who devoted more than thirty-five years in collecting all possible information from the Maori, the natives of Xew Zealand, and to various other gentlemen (among them Sir George Grey), the scientific world is indebted for much valuable information concerning the habits of these birds, derived from the folk-lores, songs, and proverbs of the natives. Thus the Maori have a- proverb, " as inert as a moa," which indicates that these birds were sluggish and stupid animals ; and the following- life history has been drawn from similar sources. They were essentially sedentary, and went about in pairs, accompanied by their young. No doubt they sometimes disputed the field on which they were seeking the same food, for the Maori still, in speaking of a struggle between two pairs of combatants, say : " Two against two, like the moas." Their nests were formed of various dried grasses and fragments of ferns, simply brought together in a heap. They ate various species of plants growing upon the borders of the woods and marshes, the young shoots of certain shrubs, etc. ; but their principal food appears to have been the root of a species of fern (Pteris esculenta), which they dug up either with the beak or with the feet. To assist in the grinding of the food swallowed, the moas, like many other birds, ate small pebbles, which, when rounded and polished by friction in the stomach, and thus rendered unfit for further service, they disgorged, just as do the ostrich and the emu. These "moa-stones" are found in great numbers, often in small heaps near skeletons, in a position indicating the place of the gizzard, thus proving that the bird died on the spot where the skeleton is now found. Being the only large indigenous warm-blooded animal, the moa was, of course, eagerly hunted by the Maori, although Mr. White writes that they were afraid of it, as a kick from the foot of one would break the bones of the most powerful brave ; hence the people made strong spears of maire, or manuka wood, six or eight feet long, the sharp end of which was cut so that it might break and leave six or eight inches of the spear in the bird. Before the chase, the Imnters engaged in prayers, invoking the assistance of those spirits to whom they attributed the power of sending good or ill fortune, supplicating, for instance, the "mist of the hills where the chase was to take place so to act that the fat of the birds may flow like the drops of dew Avhich falls from the leaves of the trees at the dawn of a summer clay; or the god of silence to keep the moas free from apprehension and fright." Some of the hunters would then conceal themselves behind the scrub on the side of the track (many of which are still visible, being about sixteen inches wide, and of a seemingly fresh appearance), while others drove them from the lakes towards the ambush. " Here the jEPWRNITHES. 47 spears were thrown at them, and the scrub on the sides of the track would catch the spears and break the jagged end off, leaving it in the bird. As it had to pass many men, the broken spear-points caused it to yield in power when it had gained the open ^ern-country, where it was attacked in its feeble condition by the most daring of the tribe." The killed bird was cut up with a knife of obsidian, made for that exclusive use, and which only served a single time. "What wild, weird scenes," exclaims Russell, "those deep valleys of the southern Alps must have witnessed, when, after the successful hunt, the natives gathered about their camp-fires, that lit up their dark tattooed faces, and shone on the strange vegetation around, to feast on the flesh of moa, or partake of its huge eggs, roasted on the hot stones of the oven ! " It will be perceived from many of the facts related above that the extermination of the giant-birds of New Zealand cannot have taken place at a very distant period. Dr. Haast, on the contrary, has taken the position that the moas were extinct before the immigration of the Maori race, which now inhabits the islands, occurred, and that these huge birds had been exterminated by an aboriginal people which he calls the "moa-hunters." This theory has been successfully opposed by Mantell, Dr. Hector, Hochstetter, and especially by Mr. A. de Quatrefages, from whose interesting memoir (1883) much of the above has been borrowed. We may perhaps not be prepared to accept as fully trustworthy the testimony of Haumataugi, the old Maori, who in 1844 related that during his childhood he had seen living moas, a statement which would bring the year of extinction down to about 1770 or 1780 ; still we cannot doubt that the extinction took place at a comparatively recent date, as it is otherwise impossible to account for the discovery of remains of soft tissue in such a condition that the muscles co\ild still be dissected ; especially if we remember that the climate of New Zealand is mild and moist, conditions favorable to a speedy dissolution of the car- casses. We may finally record the view of a man who, more than anybody else, has a right to be heard in this question, viz., Professor Richard Owen. As late as 1882 he expresses the opinion that " in the remote, well-wooded, and sparsely populated dis- tricts of the southern division of New Zealand, a recovery of a still-existing specimen of moa might be less unlikely than that of the JVbtornis, also originally i-ecognized by fossil remains." ORDER IL--^EPIORNITHES. Eleven years after the discovery of Dinornis had been announced by Owen in England, some few remains of a not less gigantic bird from Madagascar reached the museum at Paris, and two days after, on the 27th of January, 1851, Isidore Geoffrey- Saint-Hilaire read before the Parisian Academy of Sciences a paper, in which he described two enormous eggs and part of the metatarsus of a bird which he called jEpiornis maximns, meaning "the bird big as a mountain." This brought again to mind the old story of the famous Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, who located the rue or roc, the giant bird of the Arabian tales, upon Madagas- car, and related that the Great Khan of the Tartars, having heard of the bird, sent messengers to Madagascar, who brought back a feather nine spans long, and two palms in circumference, at which His Majesty expressed his unfeigned delight. This, like so many others of his strange tales, had been regarded as a fable, but now there were enough of believers who were satisfied that the egg of the rue had been found ; for the eggs exhibited measured nearly 84 inches in circumference, and would hold more than two gallons : in other words, had a capacity of nearly 150 hen's eggs, 48 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. or 17 cassowary's eggs, or 6 ostrich eggs ! The length measured 12.6 inches, the breadth 8.6 inches, and the shell had a thickness of 0.11 of an inch. No wonder that the natives employed them for different domestic purposes. In fact, the first knowl- edge of the eggs was received when some Madagascar natives came to Mauritius to o oo o buy rum, bringing ^Epiornis eggs with them to hold the liquor. This led to inquiries, and two eggs and some fragments of bones were obtained by Mr. Malavois, and sent to Paris. Since that time other remains, which have furnished the material for Alphonse Milne Edwards's investigations, published in 1869 and 1873, were discovered by Grandidier and others. It has been shown that the earlier calculations of the size of ^Epiornis were much too high, and that ^33. maximus in reality was not taller than a large African ostrich, notwithstanding the enormous size of the egg, and that the smallest of the three species known, ^E. modestus, was not much larger than the great bustard. The more astounding is the stoutness and massiveness of the hind extremities, which were still more ' elephantine ' than those of the elephant-footed moa, The characters of the bones at once refer the elephant-birds of Madagascar to the neighborhood of the ostriches and moas, particularly the former; and, as they seem to have had only three toes, Professor Bianconi's idea that they were rapacious, or rather condor-like, birds -the rue was said to be a bird of that order is not well founded. An additional proof is that the microscopic examination of the egg, according to Nathusius, shows an approach to that of Struthio, and bears no resemblance to that of the larger raptores. The chief characters of the bones known are the remarkable widening and flatten- ing of the metatarsal bone ; the enormous size of the leg-bone, which is over "2o inches long, with a circumference at its upper extremity of 18 inches, while the bone at its most contracted portion is only 6 inches round, thus showing a singular enlargement of the articular ends ; it differs from the same bone in the Dinornithoideae in having no osseous bridge over the groove of the extensor muscle of the toes, in this respect agreeing Avith the existing Struthiones. The thigh-bone was of singular proportions, being of extraordinary thickness, while in length it does not measure one half more than its lower extremity ; it was pneumatic, contrary to what exists in Apteri/x and Dinornis. The natives of Madagascar assert that a few of the giant birds are still alive in O ' some of the most secluded and unexplored parts of the island, and occasionally an exciting report of some traveler having been in the neighborhood of them reaches us through the newspapers, but the probability is that they are totally exterminated, and without doubt by the hand of man, as the famous French traveler Alfonse Grandidier emphatically assures us ; but there are reasons to believe that the report of some having been still alive not more than two hundred years ago is not entirely unfounded. The whole history of the ^Epiornithes, the enormous, massive Struthious birds, con- fined to a large island in the southern seas, and extinguished by the action of man, is a remarkable counterpart of that of the moas on New Zealand. ORDER III.-- APTERYGES. The English naturalists who, about seventy years ago, received the first kiwi skin 'from New Zealand through Captain Barclay, of the ship 'Providence,' were greatly perplexed as to the relationship of that singular bird, not larger than a hen, and which had no wings, was covered with hair-like feathers, possessed a long beak with KIWIS. 49 the nostrils placed at the tip, and had four toes. Latham called it the " apterous pen- guin," since it had four toes and no wings, remarking, however, that "the form of the foot is not greatly unlike that of the dodo, and in the above specimen the toes were not connected by an intervening membrane; yet from certain inequalities on the sides it is possible that there may have been one, and that it had been eaten away by insects." Shaw, making it the type of the genus Apteryx, 'the wingless bird,' did not remove it from the neighborhood of the penguins, pointing to the fact that the bill also was "somewhat in the form of that of the Patagonian penguin." Temminck united Apteryx and IJ ictus, the dodo, into a separate "order," the "Inertes," but " could not find a more convenient place for these two genera than by associating them in some way or another with the penguins." It was not before Yarrell in 1833 described the curious bird, that its true nature as a near ally of the Struthious birds was generally understood and admitted. Numerous specimens of kiwis (Fig. 19), have since been obtained, and not less than four living species arc now represented in the different museums, while a fifth one (A. maxima, the largest one, being of the size of a turkey) is only known from remains of a skin forming part of a Maori-chief's dress. We have now also full and excellent descriptions of the internal anatomy of these birds from the master-hands of Richard Owen and Huxley, besides not less valuable information concerning their habits and way of living, as observed by such men as Dr. Buller and the other New Zealand naturalists of recent fame. Like the other related birds, the kiwis are dromaeognathous, but the vomer unites with the palatines and pterygoids, contrary to what is the case in the ostrich ; there are no clavicles at all, and the arm, or wing, is rudimentary, as in the Casuaroideas, the hand having only one ungual phalanx, which is provided with a long external claw ; like the latter, they have both ischium and pubis free except in front. The ambiens muscle is strong, as in Struthio and Hhea, while it is absent in Casuarius and Dromaius. It was long believed that the respiratory system was quite peculiar, and more especially that the kiwis possessed a kind of diaphragm corresponding to the membrane dividing the cavity of the body in mammals, but quite recent investigations of Professor Hux- ley show that the respiratory organs on the whole are like those of most other birds, and that the diaphragm is a myth, there being not a trace of such a membrane. Only the left carotid is present, there being two in other Struthious birds except Ehea. The most noteworthy external features are the long snipe-like bill, with nostrils open- ing near the end ; the rudimentary wing, which supports a row of numerous rudimen- tary quills, evidently degraded rectrices; absence of separate tail-feathers; presence of a short, elevated hind toe ; finally, a covering of more or less bristly feathers with downy bases, but without aftershafts, in this respect differing highly from the cassowa- ries, emus, and moas ; the fore part of the head and sides of the face are beset with straggling hairs, or feelers, varying in length from one to six inches. Dr. Buller says that a full and complete history of the wingless birds which, even to the present day, form the most distinctive feature in the avi-fauna of Xew Zealand, would necessarily fill a volume. We shall therefore here only remark that of the four existing well-known species, one, A. mantelli, inhabits the North Island alone; two others, A. australis and Jiaasti are confined to the South Island, while A. oweni is found on both islands. The general color is a dull mottled brownish or grayish, the latter and smaller species being rather gray, and therefore usually called the gray kiwi. A. Jiaasti is the "roa-roa," of the natives, and is the larger one. The two other species can hardly be told apart by sight alone, but are said VOL. iv. 4 50 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. to be readily distinguished by the touch ; for in the South Island kiwi (A. australis) the feathers of the upper parts feel soft and yielding when stroked against the grain, whereas in Mantell's kiwi, from the North Island, the feathers have stiffened points, and are harsh and prickly to the touch, owing to a peculiarity in the structure of the shaft. The kiwis are nocturnal birds, the different species having nearly identical habits, and the following life history of the commonest species, A. mantelli, which we borrow from Buller's excellent account, will therefore also cover the other. Of a bird kept in captivity, he writes; It appears to be blinded by the strong glare of sunlight, and although it recovers itself in the shade, it can then only detect objects that are near. Night is the time of its activity, and the whole nature of the bird then undergoes a change. Coming forth from its diurnal retreat full of animation, it moves about the aviary unceasingly, tapping the Avails with its long, slender bill, and probing the ground in search of earth-worms. The feeding of this bird at night with the large glow-worm is a very interesting sight. This annelid, which often attains a length of twelve, and sometimes twenty inches, with a proportionate thickness, emits at night a bright phosphoric light. The mucous matter which adheres to its body appears to be charged with the phosphorus, and on its being disturbed or irritated, the whole surface of the worm is illumined with a bright green light, sufficiently strong to render adjacent objects distinctly visible. Seizing one of these large worms in its lonu; mandibles, the kiwi proceeds to kill it by striking it rapidly on the ground, or against some hard object. During this operation the bird may be clearly seen under the phos- phoric light ; and the slime which attaches itself to the bill and head renders these parts highly phosphorescent, so that, even after the luminous bod} r itself has been swallowed, the actions of the bird are still visible. There is no longer the slow and half stupid movements of the head and neck ; but the bill is darted forward with a restless activity, and travels over the surface of the ground with a continued sniffing sound, as if the bird were guided more by scent than by sight in its search for food. Of some young birds he remarks that they are particularly savage, using their feet as weapons of offence, and manifesting their anger by an audible snapping of the bill ; at other times they emitted a peculiar chuckle, but only once he heard them produce the loud whistling cry which is so familiar to the ear in the wild mountain-haunts of the kiwi. They often huddled together when at rest, laying one upon another, like little pigs; and when sound asleep no amount of noise would rouse them. The kiwi, Dr. Buller continues, is in some measure compensated for the absence of wings by its swiftness of foot. When running, it makes wide strides, and carries the body in an oblique position, with the neck stretched to its full extent and inclined for- wards. In the twilight it moves about cautiously, and as noiselessly as a rat, to which indeed, at this time it bears some outward resemblance. In a quiescent posture, the body generally assumes a perfectly rotund appearance ; and it sometimes, but only rarely, supports itself by resting the point of the bill on the ground. It often yawns when disturbed in the daytime, gaping its mandibles in a very grotesque manner. The story of its striking the ground with its feet to bring the earthworms to the sur- face, which appears to have gained currency among naturalists, is as fanciful as the statement of a well-known author that it is capable of "inflicting a dangerous blow, sometimes even killing a dog." While hunting for its food, the bird makes a continual sniffing sound through the nostrils. Whether it is guided as much by touch as by smell, I cannot safely say ; but TINAMOUS. 51 it appears to me that both senses are called into action. It is probable that, in addi- tion to a highly developed olfactory power, there is a delicate nervous sensitiveness in the terminal enlargement of the upper mandible. It is interesting to watch the bird, in a state of freedom, foraging for worms, which constitute its principal food; it moves about with a slow action of the body, and the long, flexible bill is driven into the soft ground, generally home to the very root, and is either immediately withdrawn with a worm held at the extreme tip of the mandibles, or it is gently moved to and fro, by an action of the head and neck, the body of the bird being perfectly steady. On getting the worm fairly out of the ground, it throws up its head with a jerk, and swallows it whole. The enormous size of the kiw T i's egg has often been the subject of speculation and comment, for, until the fact was established beyond all question, it seemed almost impossible that the very large eggs occasionally brought in by the natives were the produce of this bird. The evidence has been furnished by eggs laid in the Zoological Gardens, and by another taken in utero. One of the former is stated to have weighed 14^ ounces, or about one fourth of the bird's own weight. The probability is that the male alone sits on the egg. The kiwis are monogamic. ORDER IV. CRYPTURI. Even the older authors were aware of some of the Struthious features of these small South American ground-birds, which usually are referred to the Gallinaceous order. Illiger remarked as early as 1811 that " the bill is Avonderfully conformable with that of JRhea" and later on (1835) Sundevall stated that they " recall small ostriches." Their small size, and a certain superficial resemblance to the gallinaceous birds pre- vented the recognition of their true nature until Parker's celebrated anatomical monograph appeared in 1865. The presence of a crest on their breast-bone, however, seemed to Huxley to be so strong a character, that he would not admit them to the division including the ostriches, and so he made of them a separate order, the distinc- tive feature of which was the predominance of Struthious characters. We have stated above, why the presence or absence of a keel to the sternum seems to us to be a matter of only slight consequence, particularly when seeing that most of the other characters of importance are chiefly struthionine. That certain birds of other orders for instance, Dendrortyx, Ilemipodius, Syrrhaptes, the rails, and the plovers, present characters to a certain degree also found in the Crypturi, is quite natural, as these forms are comparatively generalized and therefore possess the reptilian features of the common ancestors less obscured than their more specialized relatives of the Euornithic series or super-order. It is therefore not quite correct to say that the Crypturi are intermediate between the Struthious and the Gallinaceous birds, when the fact is that the latter are intermediate between their own and the Droirueog- O nathous birds' common ancestors, on the one hand, and those of the rest of the Euornithes on the other. Not only is the bill struthionine, but still more so the palatal arrangement, for the broad coalescing vomer in front joins the end of the broad maxillo-palatines, receiving behind the hinder end of the palatines (which do not articulate with the basisphenoid), and the anterior ends of the pterygoids. Another Struthious feature is that the head of the quadrate bone is single. Notwithstanding the fact that the wings of the tinamous, as the birds of this order are called, are functional, the shoulder-girdle and the sternum present enough characters to show that they have " not escaped from the 52 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. struthious group, yet," as Parker puts it. According to this authority, the wings also seem to be struthious rather than gallinaceous, for in the humerus the crest for the insertion of the pectoralis major is not turned over as in the fowl ; this answers to the extreme (struthious) thinness of that muscle in the tinamou, this bird havino- but little power to depress his wings. He can elevate them, however. It is highly inter- esting, he says, to see the tinamou lift his wings, just in the same manner as the ostrich elevates hers. The tinamou's "organs of flight " are still much more rudimentary than those of the foAvl, seeing that they are constructed far more for elevation than for depression, the latter movement being the one so necessary to flight. Again the pelvic arch presents the A r ery mark common to the birds we have hitherto treated of, namely, that the ischium is not united with the backward extension of the ilium by bone, as is the case in all other birds. To the struthious character of the breast-muscles corresponds peculiarities of the muscles of the legs, of which the ac- cessory femoro-caudal has a slip arising above the sciatic foramen, found elsewhere, according to Garrod, only in the Struthiones. Finally, Dr. Nathusius has found that the minute structure of the tinamou eo-o'-shells ~~ is quite different from those of the true Gal- linre, in that respect showing most resem- blance to Apteryx. Among external characters may be men- tioned that the bill is depressed, and the mouth split open to under the eyes ; the head is comparatively small, the neck FIG. 21. Crypturus megapodius. rather long and narrow. The wings are short and rounded, the tail feathers con- cealed under the coverts, or altogether absent. The feet are provided Avith a rather short hind toe, elevated from the ground. Powder-downs are present among the feathers, and in some the feathers have aftershafts. Several genera with a number of species, about fifty, distributed in two sub-families, are recognized from Central and South America, Avhere they are usually knoAvn as Perdiz, partridge, being in fact, as game birds, a kind of substitutes for true Gallinae. Their size ranges between that of a ruffed grouse and a ring plover. They are emi- nently ground-birds, Avhich never perch on trees or shrubs. The largest and best known species is the Perdiz grande or 1' Ynambu (Rhyncho- tus rufescens) from Brazil southward. It is of a rusty yellow, banded crosswise on the upper surface with blackish ; bill rather long, Avith the nostrils in the basal part, hind toe well developed, and tail feathers short and soft. Mr. Hudson, having the opportunity of studying the habits of several species of tinamou, has published TIN A MO US. 53 some interesting sketches, from which the following concerning the present species is selected : This bird has no cover but the giant grasses, through which it pushes like a rail, and wherever the country is settled it soon disappears. It is solitary in its habits, con- FIG. 2-'. rJujnchotus rufcscens, Perdiss graude, 1'Ynambu. ceals itself in the grass very closely, and flies with great reluctance. I doubt if there is anywhere a bird with such a sounding flight as this ; and I can only compare the whirr of its wings to the rattling of a light vehicle driven at great speed over a hard road. From the moment it rises till it again alights, there is no cessation in the rapid vibration of the wings; but, like a ball thrown by the hand, the bird goes gradually sloping v towards the earth, the "^^ ^^ ^^a^^^^^X 7 P distance it is able to ,. , i FIG. 23. Pelvis of Tinamus robustus ; a. acetabulum ; il, ilium ; is. ischium ;/j,pubis. accomplish at a flight being from fifteen hundred to two thousand yards. This flight it can repeat, when driven \ip again, as many as three times, after which the bird can rise no more. The 54 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. * call is composed of five or six long notes, with a, mellow, flute-like sound, and so impressively uttered and sweetly modulated, that it is, perhaps, the sweetest bird- music heard in the Pampas. The tinamous are considered rather stupid birds, and Darwin relates of another species, Notliura major, which is smaller, has a short bill, and no tail, that a man on horseback, by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spiral, so as to approach closer each time, may knock on the head almost as many as he pleases. The more common method is to catch, them with a noose, or little lasso, made of the stems of an ostrich's feather, fastened to the end of a long stick. A boy on a quiet old horse will frequently thus catch thirty or forty in a day. The smallest species is the Ynambu carape (Taoniscus nanus) from Brazil and Paraguay, it being only six inches long. It has no rectrices, but the coverts are dense silky, and greatly elongated so as to form a kind of a train. It seems to be still more unable to keep up a continued flight than the Hhynchotus ; but little is known of its habits beyond Azara's account. The foregoing birds, together with most of the species composing the family, belong to the group Tinaminae. In the martineta ( Calopezus eleyans) we have a representation of the Tinamotinae. Mr. Hudson dissected a specimen, and found a most extraordinary structure of the intestinal canal, which he describes as divided near the stomach into a pair of great ducts that extend almost to the entire length of the abdominal cavity, and are thickly set with rows of large, membranous, clam-shaped protuberances. Externally, the martineta. from size and mottled plumage, somewhat resembles the jRhynchotus, but is less reddish, and has a shorter bill, while its head is ornamented with a long, slender crest, " which, when excited, the bird carries direct for- ward, like a horn." Mr. Hudson remarks further that it is found in the northwestern portion of the Plata States, and south to the Rio Negro of Patagonia, frequenting the elevated table-lands, where patches of scattered dwarf sci'ub occur among the close thickets, and subsisting on seeds and berries. They go in coveys of from half a dozen to twenty individuals, and, when disturbed, do not usually take to flight, but start up one after another, and run off with amazing swiftness. They are extremely fond of dusting themselves. ORDER. GASTORNITHES. In March, 1855, it was announced to the French Academy of Sciences that M. Gaston Plante had found in the conglomerate underneath the plastic clay at Bas- Meudon, France, a leg-bone of a gigantic bird, to which Mr. Herbert gave the name Gastornis parisiensis, " in order to indicate both the name of the discoverer and the locality where it was found." Shortly after, a thigh-bone was discovered, only three metres distant from the place where the leg-bone had been found. These remains, from the lowest eocene beds, were conscientiously studied by several savants, but the great difference in their conclusions did not throw much light upon the affinities of the bird. Mr. Herbert, Milne-Edwards, and Lemoine came to the conclusion that Gastornis or rather its legs showed relationship to the Lamellirostres, or the duck order. Valenciennes referred it to the neighborhood of the albati'osses, while Lartet and Owen demonstrated some points of resemblance to the waders, particularly the rails. Recently additional material was discovered by the indefatigable Dr. Lemoine, of Reims, France, who has been enabled to describe two other species of Gastornis, G. minor and G. edwardsii, the former, however, from the fragment of a leg-bone only, GASTORNITHES. 55 2.00 100- 0.50W while numerous bones, and fragments of bones, of the latter, have been preserved. Both were found in lower tertiary deposits near Reims, and from the same geological horizon as the typical species, and in 1883 L. Dollo announced a thigh-bone from the same formation in the neighborhood 2.25 of Mons, Belgium. Upon these fossils is based the restoration represented in the accompanying cut, in which the shaded portions indicate the parts Avhich have been found. The most unique and re- markable character of the bird is said to be the distinctness in the adult bird of the sutures between the different bones of the skull, since in all other known birds these bones are anchylosed, and the sutures ob- literated. This feature alone justifies the view that Gastornis is a peculiar type of at least ordinal rank, which accordingly has been attributed to it here. On the other hand, we cannot assign it a place very re- mote from the dromreognathous birds, with which the pelvic remains and the anterior extremities seem to indicate relationship. It may be that here is a representative of the ancestral stock from which flamingos, screamers, and ducks have sprang, or rather a form which takes the same position to the latter forms as do the Crypturi to the Galli- naceous birds. The true position of this type is impossible to make out at present, how- ever, and it has therefore been placed at the Fm 24 _ Gastornis cdwar( j sii> as restore d by L. Dollo. end of the series called Droma3Ognatha3. Before closing the chapter of the Droma3Ognathous birds we may mention a few fossil remains which seem to belong to this group, the greater abundance of which dur- ing former geological periods is evident. Professor Brandt has described a gigantic egg found in an old watercourse on the o o ~o steppes of southern Russia. It had a capacity of about forty-two hens' eggs, and showed distinct struthious characters. He called the supposed bird Struthiolithus chersonensis. It may have been related to Gastornis. The Diatryma giganteum, from the eocene of New Mexico, was described by Professor Cope from a tarsus-metatarsus discovered by himself. " The charactei's of its proximal extremity resemble in many points those of the order Cursores (repre- sented by the Struthionida3 and Dinornis), while those of the distal end are, in the middle and inner trochleas, like those of the Gastornis of the Paris basin. Its size indicates a species with feet twice the bulk of those of the ostrich." The discovery introduces this group of birds to the known faunas of North America recent and extinct, and demonstrates that this continent has not been destitute of the gigantic forms of birds heretofore chiefly found in the faunas of the southern hemisphere. LEONHARD STEJISTEGER. 56 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. SUPER-ORDER II. IMPENNES. This group, which, for reasons given further on, we here propose to treat as a superorder equivalent to the Dromseognathae (ostriches, etc.) and Etiornithes (including the rest of the living birds), has suffered a curious fate under the hands of ornitholo- gists. Although one of the most distinct and peculiar divisions within the homo- geneous bird-class, its position among the other groups has, until lately, been a very subordinate one. Linnaeus did not even recognize the penguins as a separate genus. He placed one of these fin-winged species together with the swift-flying sun-birds, or tropic-birds, while another was ranked with the albatross. Brisson, the great contemporaneous ornithol- ogist, however, made both those species types of separate genera, the latter of the genus Spheniscus, the former he called Catarractes. They were shortly after com- bined, by Forstcr and Gmelin, with other species into the genus Aptenodytes. The efforts of Cuvier and the ornithologists of his age resulted in the cutting up of Linnseus's 'families,' --as his 'ordines' were styled at that time, into several orders, the Natatores, among which the penguins had been placed, being divided in Pinnipedes (Steganopodes), Macropteres (Longipennes), Serrirostres (Lamellirostres) and Brachyptercs (Pygopodes), and among the latter Avere placed the divers, auks, and penguins as genera of equal rank. A decided progress was made by Illiger in 1811, who divided the 'order' Natatores in six families, the last being the Impennes, which only included the genus Aptenodytes. But when Vigors in 1825 established the families ending in idee, the penguins were again included among the ' Alcidae.' Bonaparte, soon after (1831), made them the types of the family Spheniscidae, a posi- tion they held for nearly forty years without any serious challenge, as even Huxley failed to recognize their true position, assigning them, as he did, a place as a ' family ' of equal taxonomic value with the plovers, cranes, gulls, etc. G. R. Gray had placed the penguins between the auks and the guillemots, consequently between two groups the typical species of which (the razor-billed auk, and the common guil- lemot), by many prominent ornithologists of the present day, are regarded as not even generically distinct; but it was not before he (in 1871) repeated this master- piece of systematical perversity, that it became evident to all that the true relation- ship of these remarkable birds had been grossly misunderstood. Nevertheless, the rank of ' order ' was all that could be afforded at the time, and it is not until very recently that it has been set clearly forth that the penguins, notwithstanding the keel on tlieir breast-bone, are as remote from the other Carinatae (birds with keeled sternum) as these are from the ostriches, if not more so. "We have discussed this point at some length because of the interesting parallelism it presents with the fate of the Struthious birds, which at times also have been treated as a genus merely under different families, or orders even (Cursores; Otididse), until the truth of their distinctness was recently acknowledged. The assertion of Profes- sor Huxley, that the extinct great auk (Plant us impennis) " shows itself to be an almost intermediate form " between the penguins and the auks, for a short while pre- vented the full recognition of the broad gap between the former and the rest of the living birds, but recent investigations show quite an opposite result. In 1883 Professor Watson, in the seventh volume of the Report on the Results of the Challenger Expedition, presented an excellent " Report on the Anatomy of the PENGUINS. 57 Fir;. 25. Pelvis of Ciitarractes dcmer- sus, dorsal view. Spheniscidse," from which, on account of the importance of determining the rela- tionship of the higher group of birds, we shall quote freely in the following. The vertebral column is characterized by the opisthoecelous character of the dor- sal vertebrae, a character which, judging from the frequency of its occurrence in the two groups, is more truly reptilian than avian, and by the mobility of the dorsal vertebrae upon one another, and the absence, even in the adult, of that complete anchylosis between the dorsal and lumbo- sacral vertebrae on the one hand, and of the latter with the pelvic bones on the other, which obtains in the majority of birds. The opisthocoelous character of the vertebrae shows itself for the first time in the third dorsal ; the cervical and the two first dorsal vertebrae being saddle-shaped. The succeeding dorsals differ in having the ante- rior surfaces rounded and globular, while their posterior surfaces are deeply concave. The Jumbo-sacral portion of the vertebral column never becomes anchylosed with the pelvic bones, not even in the adult (Fig. 25). The pubis does not coalesce with the ischium, ex- cept where it enters the acetabulum. The uncinate processes of the ribs are exceptionally large, and are only connected with the ribs by articulations, never becoming anchylosed with them as in the majority of birds. The shoulder-blade (Fig. 26) is remarkable for its enormous size and its great width posteriorly, and the coracoid bone for its great strength. The most characteris- tic feature of the wing, as a, whole, is perhaps the great amount of compression exhib- ited by all its bones, offering, when the wing-paddle is carried forward while swimming, the minimum resist- ance to the surrounding water. Furthermore, the movements permissible between the different bones are much more limited than in other birds so much so that flexion and extension in the joints beyond the shoulder can scarcely be said to be possible. These articulations, however, admit of a very considerable amount of rotation, converting the wing into a screw-like blade. The wings are never used as oars, but are brought, into use alternately. The metacarpal consists of a single bone, which shows, however, the three elements of which it is composed. The first or radial metacarpal is destitute of any phalanx, and the pollex is consequently absent; the second finger has two phalanges, and the third only one. The legs are less modified than the wings, but the tarso-metatarsus presents fea- tures which serve at once to distinguish that bone from the corresponding skeletal element of any other group of birds, being altogether shorter and broader than in these, with the single exception of the genus Fr< (/'7/Mji\ ' i .-B^rfl .;$, I! ? jW^ !J :*f ' : GULLS. 79 of the terns, which they approach both in general coloration, structure, movements, and habits. A not distantly related species, without black on the head, however, is the mackerel-gull of New Zealand (H. scopulinus), the ' tarapunga ' of the Maori, which seems to be somewhat similar in habit to Richardson's jagger, just mentioned on a previous page, judging from Dr. W. L. Bailer's account, which is to the follow- ing effect : " This pretty little gull is one of our commonest birds, frequenting every part of the coast [of New Zealand], and being equally plentiful at all seasons of the year. It is a bird of very lively habits, and its presence goes far to relieve the mono- tony of a ride over such dreary stretches of sand as the Ninety-mile Beach, and the coast-line between Wanganui and Wellington. At one time you will meet with a flock of fifty or more in council assembled, fluttering their wings, chattering and screaming in a state of high excitement ; at another you will observe them silently winnowing the air, turning, and passing up and down at regular intervals, as they eagerly scan the surface of the water. Here you find them ranged apart along the smooth beach, like scouts on a cricket-ground ; there you see a flock of them packed together on a narrow sand-pit, standing closer than a regiment of soldiers heads drawn in, one foot up, ' standing at ease.' Then, again, if you observe them closely, you may see them following and plundering the oyster-catcher (Hcvmatopns) in a very sys- tematic manner. Nature has furnished the last-named bird with a long bill, with which C_3 * it is able to forage in the soft sand for blue crabs and other small crustaceans. The mackerel-gull is aware of this, and cultivates the society of his long-billed neighbor to some advantage, he dogs his steps very perseveringly, walking and flying after him, and then quietly standing by till something is captured, when he raises his wings and makes a dash at it. The oyster-catcher may succeed in flying off with his prey ; but the plunderer, being swifter on the wing, pursues, overtakes, and compels a surrender. The gentleman of the long bill looks gravely on while his crab is being devoured, and, having seen the last of it, he gives a stifled whistle, and trots off in search of another, his eager attendant following suit." o o From the Antipodes we turn our attention towards the icy shores surrounding the North Pole, where one of the most beautiful species of the whole family of gulls has taken up his summer residence, and whence even in winter he only very seldom makes a visit to countries inhabited by civilized man. We refer to Ross's gull (^Rho- dostetlda rosea), or the wedge-tailed gull, as it is also called, on account of the form of its tail. It is a rather small species, white, with a light pearl-gray mantle, and a very characteristic black collar round the middle of the neck ; the white being suf- fused with a delicate peach-blossom red in the fresh bird, which gradually fades away after death. The bill is black, the feet are red. The history of this bird deserves to be given in detail, since it is also the history of how slowly our knowledge of the birds inhabiting the locality where it lives has advanced, and the efforts which have been made by heroic explorers to elucidate the mystery as to the true locality of the species. The first two specimens were obtained at Alagnak, Melville Peninsula, 69 30' north latitude, by Sir James C. Ross, during the latter part of June, 1823, on Parry's second voyage. Since then a few birds w r ere seen by some of the following expeditions. Ac- cidental stragglers to southern countries were obtained in Kamtschatka, England, Faroes, Heligoland, and six specimens found their way to European collections from Greenland. During the Austro-Hungarian 'Tegethoff ' expedition, one was obtained off Franz-Josef Land, but was lost when the vessel was crushed in the ice, and Profes- sor Nordenskjold was fortunate enough to secure at the ' Vega's ' winter quarters a bird 80 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. in summer plumage, on July 1, 1879. None had been obtained by Americans, or had found their way to any American collection, though all our earlier expeditions had been on a sharp lookout for the rare and beautiful bird, until Mr. E. W. Nelson, the col- lector of the U. S. National Museum, brought home from Alaska a young one obtained at St. Michaels, Oct. 10, 1879. Three days earlier, in north latitude 71 50' north of Siberia, on the ill-fated ' Jeannette,' Mr. R. L. Newcomb shot two in au- tumnal plumage, and, during the drift of the vessel in the ice the following year, he secured specimens in the latter part of June ; altogether he obtained eight birds. But when he had to leave the doomed ship, " when it was a question of saving their bare lives, and the necessaries of existence which each one of the shipwrecked crew could carry had to be weighed literally by the ounce, Mr. Newcomb gallantly stuck to three of these birds, and brought them in safety across Asia and Europe to the Smith- FIG. 34. Rhodostethia rosea, Ross's gull. sonian Institution." In the records of collecting, we can call to mind no similar instance of bull-dog tenacity, remark the editors of " The Ibis," when commenting upon the heroic deed. Finally, Mr. J. Murdock, naturalist of the Point Barrow expe- dition, collected a great number of adults and young during the latter part of September and the beginning of October, 1882, when flocks, evidently migrating, passed the Point, coming along the coast from the southwest. He sent home to the National Museum a greater number of specimens than had ever been observed before. For all that, nobody has yet found the breeding place, and no one has collected its eggs or its downy young, or observed its habits ; nor have we any information con- cerning where it spends the Avinter. But the mystery is not so great as it was ; Ross's gull has been found all round the North Pole, and it is safe to predict that it TERNS. 81 breeds on the islands of that yet untrodden region, inhabited by several other species of birds, the breeding grounds of which have not been reached by the explorer and collector. In winter it probably follows the edge of the ice, thus avoiding the shores and the vicinity of man. The gulls having already occupied more space than was originally allotted them, we will have only to mention the kittiwakes (Hissa tridactyla and brevirostris) popu- lating the Arctic bird-rookeries, the dazzling white ivory-gull ( Gavia alba) from the icy circumpolar regions, and the fork-tailed gulls, constituting the genus JCema, one of which, X. sabimi, inhabits the high north, while the other, X. furcata, a bird ex- tremely rare in collections, is a resident of a probably very restricted area in the tropics, possibly of the Galapagos Islands alone. Of those just mentioned., the kittiwake is perhaps most interesting, because of the immense number of birds composing their breeding colonies, an account of which will be of great interest, and we therefore take pleasure in introducing the following sketch, by Henry Seebohm, of one of those rookeries. " The largest colony of birds which I have ever seen is that at Svaerholt, not far from the North Cape, in Norway, on the cliffs which form the promontory between the Porsanger and the Lakse Fjords. It is a stupendous range of cliffs, nearly a thou- sand feet high, and so crowded with nests that it might easily be supposed that all the kittiwakes in the world had assembled there to breed. The number of birds has, however, been grossly exaggerated. If we estimate the surface of the cliff covered by the nests at about 640,000 square feet, and allow for each nest a foot in width and two feet and a half in height, we obtain a total of (say) a quarter of a million breed- ing birds. Supposing the non-breeding birds to be ten to one, surely a very high esti- mate, we only reach live and a half million birds. When a recent writer says that ' the number of individuals must amount to milliards,' or thousands of millions, he is simply talking unmitigated nonsense, and obviously has no conception of what a mil- liard is. One milliard kittiwakes laid in a row, and touching one another 1 , would reach twenty times round the world. But in spite of all this tall talk, the number is in- credible. It is the custom to fire off a cannon opposite the colony ; peal after peal echoes and re-echoes from the cliffs, every ledge appears to pour forth an endless stream of birds, and long before the last echo has died away, it is overpowered by the cries of the birds, whilst the air in every direction exactly resembles a snowstorm, but a snowstorm in a whirlwind. The birds fly in cohorts ; those nearest the ship are all flying in one direction, beyond them other cohorts are flying in a different direction, and so on, until the extreme distance is a confused mass of snowflakes. It looks as if the fjord was a large chaldron of air, in which the birds were floating, and as if the floating mass was being stirred by an invisible rod. The seething mass of birds made an indelible impression on my memory; it photographed itself on my mind's eye, as such scenes often do." The chief characteristic of the terns, as distinguished from the gulls, have already been given on a previous page. In their habits they resemble the gulls, especially the smaller species, but in the same way as their appearance and structure is, so to speak, a kind of intensification of the gull type ; so are also their habits and peculi- arities, like those of the gulls, in a maximized and intensified degi-ee. Let us, for instance, mention only their curiosity. Thus writes J. F. Naumann, the famous German ornithologist, of Sterna paradiscea, the arctic tern : "When something new happens, such a bird soon arrives, inspects it closely, and, fluttering over it, gives out a VOL. IV. 6 82 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. cry that in a moment brings together quite a gathering, which, after having satisfied their curiosity, disperses by and by. If a new mound of earth be thrown up, or a handkerchief or a piece of paper be lost, or if they see a recently killed bird lying, or a captured one flapping its wings, immediately are they at hand, flutter and vacillate, screaming over the object of their admiration, and, when through gaping and tired of crying, fly off in different directions." Did space permit, long and interesting accounts could be given of the terns, but we are compelled to dismiss them with but few words. - T -^ - ^<^=>- X*YN * ^= FIG. 35. Sterna tschegrava, Caspian teru. The terns exhibit in their flight some remote resemblance to the swallows, which, in connection with the usually deeply forked tail, has given rise to the name of sea- swallows, as they are called in many languages ; while the elegance of their motions when on the wing has caused many an enthusiastic outburst both of poets and naturalists. " Light as a sylph," says Audubon, " the arctic tern dances through the air above and around you. The Graces, one might imagine, had taught it to perform those beautiful gambols which you see it display the moment you approach the spot it has chosen for its nest." The terns only seize their prey, which usually consists of small fishes, by darting headlong upon them from a considerable height, and the force of their sudden and dashing plunges is really astonishing. " The descent of a tern," SKIMMERS. 83 to quote from Mr. William Brewster's excellent paper on the terns of the New Eng- land coast, " upon its victim is performed with inimitable ease and grace. The bird frequently disappears entirely beneath the surface, and occasionally even swims a short distance under water before reappearing." His description of the scene when a flock of terns have discovered a school of blue-fish is so animated and picturesque, that I feel jiistified in quoting once more : " Dozens dash down at once, cleaving the water like darts, and, rising again into the air, shake the salt spray from their feathers by a single energetic movement, and make ready for a fresh plunge. Every bird amonir them is screaming his shrillest, and the excitement waxes fast and furious. o c? ' Beneath, the blue-fish are making the water boil by their savage rushes, and there is fun and profit for all save the unfortunate prey." Though a group of considerable homogeneity, the Sternea? comprise a few somewhat outlying genera, as the noddies (Anous~), dusky of color, and the white terns ( Gygis) pure white ail over, both forms with graduated or wedge-shaped tails. Both are trop- ical, the latter especially inhabiting the islands of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, Polynesia, and Australia, while numbers of the former genus also occur in the New World, a single species {A. stolidus) even belonging to the fauna of the United States. The genus (or rather super-genus) Sterna, includes about fifty species, among them our common terns, but is divisible into several more or less well-defined groups. Thus the bird represented in our cut (/Sterna tschegrava or caspia), the largest species, is the type of ThcdasseuSj while the smallest species for instance, our S. antillarurn and the European S. minuta form the group Sternula. We now come to a small group of Laroid birds, remarkable for their curious bill, the lower mandible of which has been compared with a " short-handled pitchfork," and for their long wings, viz., the skimmers, the Rhynchopinse, not less remarkable for their peculiar habits and their geographical distribution, parts of America, Asia, and Africa being inhabited by one species each. The American species (Rhynchops nigra), the black skimmer, or shearwater, as it is also called, which occurs on our east coast up to New Jersey, has found many excellent biographers and describers, from whom we only make two selections. Our immortal Wilson thus describes this singular bird : " The shearwater is formed for skimming, while on wing, the surface of the sea for its food, which consists of small fish, shrimps, young fry, etc., whose usual haunts are near the shore and towards the surface. That the lower mandible, when dipped into and cleaving the water, might not retard the bird's way, it is thinned and sharpened like the blade of a knife ; the upper mandible, being at such times elevated above water, is curtailed in its length, as being less necessary, but tapering gradually to a point, that, on shutting, it may offer less opposition. To prevent inconvenience from the rushing of the water, the mouth is confined to the mere opening of the gul- let, which indeed prevents mastication taking place there ; but the stomach, or gizzard, to which this business is solely allotted, is of uncommon hardness, strength, and mus- cularity; far surpassing, in these respects, any other water bird with which I am acquainted. To all these is added a vast expansion of wing, to enable the bird to sail with sufficient celerity while dipping in the water. The general proportion of the length of our swiftest hawks and swallows to their breadth is as one to two ; but in the present case, as there is not only the resistance of the air, but also that of the water, to overcome, a still greater volume of wing is given, the shear- water measuring nineteen inches in length, and upwards of forty-four in extent. In short, whoever has attentively examined this curious apparatus, and observed the pos- 84 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. sessor, with his ample wings, long bending neck, and lower mandible, occasionally dipped into, and ploughing, the surface, and the facility with which he procures his food, cannot but consider it a mere playful amusement, when compared with the dash- ing immersions of the tern, the gul], or the fish-hawk, who, to the superficial observer, appear so superiorly accommodated." Darwin observed the skimmer in South America. That excellent observer gives us the following account of its habits: "Near Maldonado (in May), on the borders of a lake which had been nearly drained, and which in consequence swarmed with small fry, I watched many of these birds flying backwards and forwards for hours together, close to its surface. They kept their bills wide open, and with the lower mandible half buried in the water. Thus skim- ming the surface, generally in small flocks, they ploughed it in their course ; the w r ater was quite smooth, and it formed a most curious spectacle to behold a flock, each bird leaving its narrow wake on the mirror-like surface. In their flight they often twisted about with extreme rapidity, and so dexterously managed, that they ploughed up small fish with their projecting lower mandibles, and secured them with the upper half of their scissor-like bills. This fact I repeatedly witnessed, as, like swallows, they continued to fly backwards and forwards, close before me. Occasionally, when leaving the surface of the water, their flight was wild, irregular, and rapid ; they then also uttered loud, harsh cries. When these birds were seen fishing, it was obvious that the length of the primary feathers was quite necessary in order to keep their wings dry. When thus employed, their forms resembled the symbol by which many artists i*epresent marine birds. The tail is much used in steering their irregular course." It has already been hinted at, on a previous page, that the super-family PROCELLAROI- DE^E might perhaps better constitute a sepa- rate order, Tubinares. Their differences from all the foregoing birds are many and important, and their affinities seem to be more with the Steganopodes and Herodiones than with the gulls or the auks, to some of which many of the petrels show a remarkable external and superficial resemblance. We will give their essential characters, as contrasted with those of the Laroidea3, in order to show this. The petrels are holorhinal, the gulls schizorhinal ; the former have tubular nostrils, the latter normal ones ; whenever a hind toe is present, it consists in the petrels, of one phalanx only, while, in the gulls, the normal number of two phalanges is always present, however rudimentary the toe ; in the petrels, the great pectoral muscle is disposed in two quite separate layers, an arrangement unknown in the gulls, and the pectoralis tertius of the former is entirely unrepresented in the latter ; the muscular formula of the legs in petrels is, as a rule, A B X Y, a combination, so far as we know, never found in the gulls ; the form FIG. 36. Skeleton of giaut fulmar. ALBATROSSES. 85 of the stomach and the characters of the creca are entirely different in the two groups, and so are the characters of the plumages of the young (adult of both sexes, and young, except the Albatrosses, being alike); the number and color of eggs, etc., all points of special importance in settling the question of affinity. Some of the peculiarities are quite unique among existing birds ; for instance, the tubular nostrils, the structure of the hind toe, and the form of the stomach, features which should secure a distinct position for the group, it being, as mentioned above, rather probable that the Tubinares should be placed in the neighborhood of the Steganopodes and Herodii, notwithstanding the desmognathism of the latter, since the palate in the albatrosses, though yet schizognathous, shows a decided tendency towards becoming desmognathous, being, in fact, intermediate between these two categories of palatal structure. At all events, Professor Huxley's remark, that " the gulls grade insensibly into the Procellariidae," has been shown, by the researches of Garrod and Forbes, to be entirely erroneous, since, from their investigations, it is evident, that the Procel- laroidere represent the rather specialized offshoot (in some features) of a very general- ized ancestor, being certainly a group of considerable isolation, great antiquity, and consequently highly interesting to the systematic ornithologist. We shall here adhere to the commonly accepted division of this group, in three families, Diomedidre, Procellariidre, and Pelecanoididie ; the first one characterized by the lateral and separate position of the nasal tubes, while the last is remarkable for the shortness of its wings and the total absence of a hind toe. The albatrosses have usually been regarded as three-toed, but, while one genus really has a minute external hind toe, the ossicles, or rudimentary bones of a fourth toe, have been found under- neath the skin in the others ; the toe proper, in all cases, consisting of one phalanx only. We cannot pass by in silence, however, the arrangement proposed by Garrod and Forbes, distributing the Tubinares in two primary groups, according to the presence (Oceanitidre) or absence (Procellariidaj) of the leg-muscle Y (accessory semiten- dinosus), and the corresponding absence and presence of colic cceca, together with a number of other characters : but we are not prepared to regard these features as so important as those which constitute the characteristic marks of the three families mentioned above, though, with Robert Ridgway, we are willing to admit the Oceani- tinas as a sub-family under the Procellariidae. The first family, then, consists of the albatrosses (DIOMEDID^E), those long-winged ocean-birds, which, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, follow the vessels over the tropical and southern seas, circling about them monotonously day after day, picking up the offal, arousing the tired sailor's admiration by the power and endurance of their scarcely moving wings, which seem never to know or need a rest. One of the most important characters of the family has already been mentioned, viz., that the tubes by which the nostrils open outwardly are situated one on each side of the bill, and not more or less closely united on top of the culmen, as in the other families. Whether this feature is an old and generalized one, indicating the way by which, finally, the curious and unique 'double-barrel' on top of the bill was formed, or whether it represents an arrested development during embryonic life, cannot be dis- cussed here. It can only be noted that the albatrosses, so far as color of plumage is concerned, seem to be more generalized than the rest, the young ones being decidedly different from the adults. On the other hand, they have reached a high degree of specialization in some respects; for instance, the proportionate great length of the upper arm-bone, the consequent enormous length and peculiar shape of the wing, and 86 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. the great number of secondaries. Formerly, two other distinctive marks were attri- buted to the albatrosses, viz., want of aftershafts, and lack of hind toe, but rudiments both of the former and of the latter have recently been proved to exist. The longest and perhaps best known species is the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), the one represented by the accompanying cut, the largest water-bird in exis- tence, and the bird with the greatest stretch of wing, some specimens being said to FIG. 37. Diomedea exulans, wandering albatross. measure fourteen feet between the tips of the wings. The color is white, more or less waved, and vermiculated with blackish, the hand-feathers being black ; the eye is brown, the naked ring round it light greenish, the bill pinkish white, and the legs of a light flesh color. Like all the members of the family, they are inter-tropical and sub-antarctic in their distribution, and it is a significant fact which should not be lost sight of, when discussing the affinities and genesis of the Tubinarcs, that the group reaches its greatest development and number of forms south of the equator. No traveler has witnessed the albatross in the state of nature without expressing ALBATROSSES. 87 his enthusiasm when describing its sailing flight. Says Dr. Bennett : " It is pleasing to observe this superb bird sailing in the air, in graceful and elegant movements, seem- ingly excited by some invisible power ; for there is scarcely any movement of the wings seen after the first and frequent impulses are given, when the creature elevates itself in the air, rising and falling as if some concealed power guided its various motions, without any muscular exertion of its own." J. Gould is still more enthu- siastic : " The powers of flight of the wandering albatross are much greater than those of any other bird that has come under my observation. Although during calm or moderate weather it sometimes rests on the surface of the water, it is almost con- stantly on the wing and is equally at ease while passing over the glassy surface, during the stillest calm, or flying with meteor-like swiftness before the most furious gale ; and the manner in which it just tops the raging billows, and sweeps before the gulfy waves, has, a hundred times, called forth my wonder and admiration. Although a vessel running before the wind frequently sails more than two hundred miles in the twenty-four hours, and that for days together, still the albatross has not the slightest difficulty in keeping up with the ship, but also performs circles of many miles in extent, returning again to hunt up the wake of the vessel for any substances thrown overboard." It is generally asserted that the albatrosses and petrels which follow the vessels are able to continue their flight without any rest, to speak of, for days and weeks, thus showing an almost incredible power of flight, and many interesting experi- ments with captured and marked birds are cited. Of another species, the black-eyebrowed albatross, (D. melanophrys) Mr. Gould, for instance, says ; " It is very easily captured with a hook and line, and, as this opera- tion gives not the least pain to the bird, the point of the hook merely taking hold in the horny and insensible tip of the bill, I frequently amused myself by capturing specimens in this way, and setting them at liberty again, after having marked many, in order to ascertain whether the individuals which Avere flying round the ship at night-fall were the same that were similarly engaged at daylight in the morning, after a night's run of 120 miles; and this, in many instances, proved to be the case," Capt. F. W. Hutton, however, who has made the flight of these birds a special study, came to different conclusions and asserts that the cases where a single individual is found to follow a ship for any length of time are exceptions, and that the habits of the alba- trosses are quite diurnal. "It is, I believe," he says, "the generally received opinion of naturalists that these birds, when seen for several days together, have never slept during the whole period, but have followed the ship night and day. To me, however, it appears incredible that any animal should be able to xindergo so much exertion for so long a time without taking rest ; and 1 hope to show that it is not necessary to suppose that it does do so. Mr. Gould says that birds caught and marked are generally seen next day ; but such is not my experience. I have sometimes marked ten or twelve Cape-pigeons (Daption capense, one of the Procellariidas) in a day, and seldom seen one again. Mr. Gould, however, is quite right when he says that sometimes a marked bird turns up after being absent for two or three days ; and how can this be accounted for except by the theory of the birds constantly following the ship ? A few certainly can be often seen flying under the stern at night. Still they are never numer- ous ; and where there were fifty or a hundred birds in the daytime there are only one or two at night. I therefore believe that, although a few may follow a ship for a night, most of them sleep in the sea, and in the morning, knowing very well that a ship is the most likely place to obtain food, they fly high with the intention of looking for 88 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. one. Some find the ship that they were with the day before, some another one. In the latter case, if the second ship is going in an opposite direction to the first, they are never seen by the first again ; if, however, the course of the two ships is the same, the bird might, very likely, lose the second ship, and rejoin the first, after a lapse of two or three days. A height of 1000 feet would enable a bird to see a ship '200 feet high more than fifty miles off, and often, although unable to see a ship itself, it would see another bird which had evidently discovered one, and would follow it in the same way that vultures are known to follow one another. This opinion is much strength- ened by the fact that at sunrise very few birds are round the ship, but soon afterwards they begin to arrive in large numbers." The same author enlarges on the general history, especially the breeding habits of the albatross, a condensed account of which will be found very interesting. The wandering albatrosses are very common south of latitude 40 S. and monopolize nearly the whole of the Prince Edward's Islands and the south-east portion, or lee-side, as the sealers call it, of Kerguelen Island, to which places they retire to breed in October. The nest, which is always placed on high table lands, is in the shape of the frustrum of a cone, with a slightly-hollowed top, and is made of grass and mud, which the birds obtain by digging a circular ditch, about two yards in diameter, and pushing the earth towards the centre, until it is about eighteen inches high. In this nest the female bird lays one white egg, which is not hatched until January. It is asserted, upon the authority of Mr. Richard Harris, engineer of the Royal Navy, that the old birds leave their young and go to sea, and do not return until the next October. " Each pair goes at once to its old nest, and after a little fondling of the young one, which has remained in or near the nest the whole time, they turn it out, and repair the nest for the next brood." Hutton thinks that the old ones go to sea when the young are about three months old, and that the latter are nocturnal in their habits, and go down to the sea at night to feed, returning to their nests in the morning, though Harris's testimony is to the effect that the young during that period are unable to fly. Mr. C. J. Anderson has suggested that the young birds " live on their own fat " while the parents are absent, and asks : " If other animals can live for several consecutive months on their own fat, why not birds ? " The PROCELLARIID^E is the group richest in species, comprising, as it does, about seventy different forms, in size varying from that of a sparrow, as the stormy petrels (Procettaria, and Oceanodroma)^ to that of one of the smaller species of albatrosses, as the giant fulmar ( Ossifraga giganted). The most essential external characters are the tubular nostrils on top of the culmen, combined with long wings, and the presence of a small hind toe. Inter se the members of this family group themselves around several somewhat diverging centres, forming more or less separate groups ; most inter- esting, as far as anatomical peculiarities are concerned, being the so-called sub-family Oceanitinse, which comprises four genera of small stormy-petrel-like birds, the most striking feature of which are the small number of secondaries (ten only), the booted or transversely scutellate, but never reticulate tarsus, the flat and depressed claws, the length of the tarsus, absence of colic coaca, presence of an accessor)/ semitcndi- nosus muscle, etc. Typical is Wilson's petrel (Oceanites oceanica), like a 'Mother Carey's chicken,' but with long, booted tarsus, and the webs between the toes yellow, and also belonging to the North American fauna, though its centre of distribution seems to be in the southern seas. It breeds, among other places, also on Kerguelen's Island, to Avhich the following sketch of its breeding-places by Rev. A. E. Eaton DIVING PETRELS. 89 applies : " Carefully watching the lirds flying to and fro about the rocks, we observed that they occasionally disappeared into crevices amongst piles of loose stones, and crept under loose masses of rock. Having meanwhile ascertained their call, we were able, by listening attentively, to detect the exact positions of several of these hidden birds. They were easily caught when the stones were rolled aside ; but they were in couples, merely preparing for laying, and therefore we did not find any eggs." It may be remarked that the petrels usually are found in pairs in the holes before the breeding commences. Later, only one of the parents occupies the nest, while the other one brings food to the breeding mate during the night; after the chick is hatched, both parents stay away during the day, only visiting and feeding it after dark. " The egg," Mr. Eaton continues, " is laid upon the bare ground, within the recess selected bv the birds, either in a chance depression formed by contiguous stones, or in a shallow, circular hollow excavated in the earth by the parent. Having found numbers of their nesting-places I will describe my method of searching for them. Whenever there was a calm night, I used to walk with a darkened bull's-eye lantern towards some rocky hillside, such as the petrels would be likely to frequent. It was best to shut off the light and keep it concealed, using it only in dangerous places where falls would be attended with injury, and progress in the dark was hardly possible, lest the birds, see- ing it, should be silenced. On arriving at the ground selected, it was probable that storm petrels would be heard in various directions, some on the wing, others on their nests, sounding their call at intervals of from two to five minutes. Those on nests could be distinguished from others flying, by their cries proceeding from fixed posi- tions. Having settled which of the birds should be searched after, a cautious advance had to be made in her direction, two or three steps at a time, when she was in full cry. As soon as she ceased, an abrupt halt was imperative, and a pause of some min- utes might ensue before she recommenced her cry and permitted another slight advance to be effected. In the course of this gradual approach, the position of the bird might be ascertained approximately; but it had to be determined precisely, and to learn exactly where she was, she had to be stalked in the dark noiselessly. No gleam could be permitted to escape from the lantern. Loose stones, and falls over rocks, - to avoid them it was sometimes necessary to dispense with slippers, and feel one's way in stockings only, for should the petrel be alarmed once with the noise or the light, she would probable remain silent a considerable time. ISTow and then it would happen that, upon the boulder beneath which she was sitting being almost attained, the bird would cease calling. When this occurred, and many minutes elapsed without her cry being resumed, it was advisable to make a detour, and approach the rock from the opposite side, as her silence might be attributed to her seeing a person advancing towards her, and she would probably recommence her call as soon as he was out of sight. If she did not, a small pebble thrown amongst the rocks would usually elicit some sounds from her, as she would most likely conclude that the noise was being made by her mate returning to the nest. When the stone beneath which the bird was domiciled was gained at last, redoubled care had to be exercised. By stooping down, and listening very attentively, her position could be accurately ascertained. Then the lantern was suddenly turned upon her before she had time to creep out of sight, and her egg could be secured with the hand, or with a spoon tied on to a stick." Among the Procellariinas several groups may also be distinguished : first, the small stormy petrels, 'Mother Carey's chickens.' as they are usually called. 90 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. Another group is represented by the genus Prion, very remarkable for its very peculiar and broad bill, which is provided with a fringe of lamellae, somewhat similar to those of the ducks. The well-known ' Cape pigeon ' (Daption capense) also shows rudiments of lamellae, but is rather referable to the next group, including the fulmars. The bird represented in the cut is the Fulmarus glacialis, already mentioned in the Introduc- tion for its remarkable dichromatism. To this group also belong the giant fulmar (Ossifraga gigantea), from the southern seas, nearly as large as the smaller albatrosses, and dichromatic, like its northern relative. The last group comprises several genera FIG. 38. Fulmarus glacialis, arctic fulmar. of shearwaters (which are characterized by a four-notched sternum), including the very remarkable genus JBnhceria, which has a wedge-shaped tail, and the highly specialized muscular formula AX. The third and last family of the Tubinares are the PELECANOIDID.E. In their external appearance they present a striking resemblance to several of the smaller auks, being adapted to the same mode of life, and this adaptation has not only affected their external characters, the length of wings, etc., but also some of their anatomical features ; for instance, the compressed form of the wing bones, the elongated sternum, and the very long and obliquely placed ribs, have been modified in the same direction, so as to resemble the corresponding parts of auks and guillemots, though these analo- gies do not indicate any nearer relationship; of course, the opposite view being only founded upon a complete misconception of their whole, structure. Compared with other Tubinares, we note that the end of the nasal tubes, on top of the bill, is cut off DIVING PETRELS. 91 obliquely, so that the nostrils open upwards, a feature evidently produced by the div- ing habit, in order to prevent water from being forced into the ' nose,' as this tube, with great propriety, may be called. The total absence even of a rudiment of a hind toe is notable, and so is the absence of an ambiens muscle, and of the accessory femora- caudal, and accessory semitendmosus. It is, in short, a group quite generalized, as is evident from many of its anatomical features, though highly specialized in all that is affected by its diving habits. The group is very restricted in forms, and its geograph- ical distribution is tropical and antarctic. Rev. A. E. Eaton, from whom we have quoted above in another connection, writes of Pelecanoides urinatrix, the common diving petrel, which he observed at Kerguelen Island, as follows : " This bird, as Professor Wyville Thomson well observes, has a close general likeness to Alle alle. Both of them have a hurried flight ; both of them, while flying, dive into the sea with- out any interruption in the action of their wings, and also emerge from beneath the surface flying, and they both of them swim with the tail rather deep in the water. But this resemblance does not extend to other particulars of their habits. The rotche, when breeding, usually flies and fishes in small flocks of six or a dozen birds, and builds in communities of considerable size, which are excessively noisy. Diving petrels, on the other hand, are more domestic in their mode of living, fishing and flying for the most part in pairs or alone, and building sporadically. They had begun to pair when we reached Kerguelen Island. The first egg was found on the 31st of October. Their burrows are about as small in diameter as the holes of bank martins ( Clivicola I'iparia^ or kingfishers (Alcedo ispida). They are made in dry banks and slopes, where the ground is easily penetrable, and terminate in an enlarged chamber on whose floor the egg is deposited. Some of the burrows are branched, but the branches are without terminal enlargements, and do not appear to be put to any use by the birds. Before the egg is laid, both of the parents may be found in the nest-chamber, and may often be heard moaning in the daytime : but when the females begin to sit, their call is seldom heard, excepting at night, when the male in his flight to and from the hole, and his mate oil her nest, make a considerable noise. There seems to be a difference of a semi-tone between the moans of the two sexes. The call resembles the syllable ' oo ' pronounced with the mouth closed, while a slurred chromatic ascent is being made from E to C in the tenor." ORDER VII. --ORALLY. The order Grallre, as here defined, is still a rather heterogeneous assemblage, though formerly in a much worse condition, for the Grallas of olden times comprised, besides those here admitted, the whole order Herodii, and the super-families, Anhini- oidere and Phoenicoptroideas. It would, perhaps, be an improvement to remove the first two super-families of the present order, viz., Chionoideaa and Scolopacoiderc, to the foregoing order, retaining the name Grallaa for the remaining forms only, and we may expect to see the step taken some day. As it is, the members of the present order may, in general, be distinguished from those of the foregoing one by the absence of full webs between the anterior toes. True, we have a few ' waders,' with entirely palmate feet, viz., the avocets, but the enormous length of their legs, and the long and thin bill, make them separable from any and all of the Cecomorphas at first sight. They are all schizognathous, most of 92 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. them with the vomer pointed in front, have two carotids and aftershaft ; they all pos- sess the ambiens muscle, as also the semitendinosus, and the accessory slip of the latter. Generally, the ' waders ' may be said to be littoral in their habits, only few of them being exclusively terrestrial, avoiding the water as carefully as most of them do the open ocean ; the shores of the sea and the lakes, the banks of the rivers, and the swamps and marshes are inhabited by some form of this polymorphic group, the mem- bers of which are distributed all over the globe, from the icy neighborhood of the poles to the hottest regions under the equatorial sun. One of the most interesting of all the many interesting and puzzling forms of this order are the birds which compose the super-family CHIONOIDEJE. The early systematists realized the isolated position of the sheath-bills, and gave the group set aside for them various names, as Vaginati, Coleoramphi, etc., the curiously con- structed bill being the most obvious character. But in regard to the relative taxo- nomic rank of the group, opinions have differed widely, as it has been referred to every possible grade from a mere genus to an order. Equally variable have been the opinions of ornithologists as to their relationship, since some have referred them to the Gallinaceous birds, others to the Longipennes near the gulls, others again to the GrallaB. The former based their conclusions chiefly upon the most external characters and the alleged gallinaceous habits of the birds, the latter took chiefly the internal anatomy into consideration. And, indeed, it seems as if both those advocating their place near the gulls, and those urging their affinity to the plovers and oyster-catchers, are right, for the sheath-bills are so intermediate between them that it is difficult to say where they should rather go, though the present writer is inclined to place them with the latter. In fact they arc hardly well placed before both Laroideas and Cliara- drioideae are united with the Chionoideae in the same order. Notwithstanding the external difference between the members Zj of the two families composing this super-family, their mutual rela- tionship has been understood for a considerable length of time, chiefly, we think, on the authority of Bonaparte, who as early as 1832 united them in one family. Of characters which both Chionidse and Thinocoridae have in common, it may be mentioned that they are schizorhinal, that they lack occipital foramina and basipterygoid processes, but have supra-orbital impressions, that the ambiens muscle, as well as the femoro-caudal, with the acces- sory, and the semitendinosus, with its accessory slip are present (ABXY-)-), that they have two carotids, etc. The most remark- able internal feature is, perhaps, the shape of the vomer, which is broad and rounded in front, while in other allied forms, Ccco- morphous and Charadriomorphous, that bone is pointed or bind anteriorly. The palate, indeed, in this and some other respects, shows some resemblance to that of the Passerine birds, this being especially the case with the Thinocorine palate, in which the vomer is connected with the nasal cartilages in a manner recalling that of the ^Egithognatha3. Like many, not to say most, of those perplexing forms which represent the earlier offshoots, or remain as the last survivors of groups once numerous but long since decimated, the CHIONIDSE, only two species, inhabit islands in the vast oceans of the FIG. 39. Lower sur- face of skull of At- tayis f/rayl. SHEATH-BILLS. 93 southern hemisphere, they being chiefly found on the islands adjacent to the southern extremity of South America, -- Kerguelen's Island and the Crozets. The most remarkable and quite unique structure of these birds is the saddle-shaped horny sheath, overlying the base of the culmen and partly concealing the nostrils, - hence the name sheath-bill. This sheath is continued backward into a kind of IKK id covering the face, being naked and carunculated on the lores and ocular region, but densely feathered on the forehead, as represented in the accompanying cut. The bill and the naked skin are yellowish in Chionis alba, black in Ch. minor, the latter also dif- fering considerably in the shape of the sheath. On the carpus is a knob-shaped promi- nence which supports a wing spur. The plumage of both species is dazzlingly white all over. The feet are covered with a reticulate skin, both in front and behind ; four toes are present, having the normal FIG. 40. Head of Chionis alba, white sheath-bill. number of phalanges, which diminish in size from the basal to the terminal one, only very small webs connecting the an- terior toes at the base. The habits of Ch. minor, which in- habits Kerguelen's Island and the Cro- zets, unless the bird of the latter, which seems to have darker legs, is a separable form, have been only very recently in- vestigated, and specimens are still very rare in collections. The recent Ameri- can, English, and German Transit-of- Venus expeditions to that desolate shore have furnished us with excellent descriptions of the manners and peculiarities of that species. All observers agree as to their resemblance in appearance, manner of caressing one another, gait and flight, to pigeons or ptarmigans. Dr. Kidder saw them eat only soft, green seaweed when in the wild state, but Mr. Eaton, of the English party, asserts that they also feed on mussels and isopod Crustacea, and that they greedily devour shags' and penguins' eggs. The former observer enlarges upon their great tameness and curiosity. They nest in holes between or behind rocks, laying- one to three eggs, which somewhat resemble those of the oyster-catcher, toward the end of December and the beginning of January. The chicks are covered with a uni- form slate-gray down. Males and females are alike, but the loral caruncle is smaller in the latter, which also has the carpal spine smaller and flesh-colored, and not black as has the male. The young birds are like the adults, but have pink tips to their wings. The THINOCORID.E, a family consisting of two genera, Thinocorus and Attagis, with together a little more than half a dozen species, inhabit South America down to Magelhaen's Strait and the Falkland Islands ; in the tropical portions they occur, how- ever, only in the elevated regions. Externally they resemble, in size and color, quails or partridges, the analogy being carried so far as to also embrace the shortness of the legs, but the long and pointed wings, with the long secondaries, at once suggest their affinity with the Scolopacoid birds. At first they were regarded as Gallinaceous birds, while some authors referred them to the pigeons or sand-grouse ; but the Limicoline pterylosis and the many obvious structural characters soon secured place for them among the Gralla?. Finally, Professor Garrod, in 1874, settled the question beyond dispute, by giving an account of all their anatomical characteristics. From his inves- 94 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. tigations it is clear that they have strong affinities to Glareola and other Charadroid Grallas. In fact, they incline toward the latter as does Chionis toward the gulls. The most noteworthy peculiarity of their structure is the formation of the palate, which is of a " spuriously aegithognathous nature," on account of the broad, anteriorly rounded vomer, and the manner in which the nasal cartilages are there connected, as originally shown by Professor Parker. The habits of the Thinocoridae are very little known, and what we know consists chiefly of what Darwin and nearly forty years after Mr. Durnford have ascer- tained and published concerning the ' gachita,' as Thinocorus rumicivorus is called in Buenos Ayres, according to Mr. Hudson. The former says : " This very singular bird, which in its habits and appearance partakes of the character both of a wader and one of the Gallinaceous order, is found wherever there are sterile plains, or open, dry pasture land, in southern South America. Upon being approached they lie close, and then are very difficult to be distinguished from the ground. When feeding they walk rather slowly, with their legs wide apart. They dust themselves in roads and sandy places." He goes on, showing that in all these respects of habit and external appearance the bird resembles a quail. "But," he continues, "directly the bird is seen flying, one's opinion is changed ; the long, pointed wings, so different from those in the gallinaceous order, the high, irregular flight, and plaintive cry uttered at the moment of rising, recall the idea of a snipe. The sportsmen of the 'Beagle' unani- mously called it the 'short-billed snipe." Mr. Durnford ascertained that they breed in Patagonia and visit Buenos Ayres in winter [May to September], sometimes in large flocks. He lays especial stress upon this similarity in habits to the quails and sand-pipers. "When disturbed," he says, "they fly round, uttering a low whistle, and invariably alight head to wind. They remind me of flocks of Calidris arenaria (the sanderling) as they stand motionless on the ground." During his journey in central Patagonia (1877-78), he was able to discover its breeding habits, of which he gives the following account : " I took eggs at the end of October ; and the young- were running in the middle of November : but this species probably has two or more broods in the season ; for I found chicks in March. The nest is a slight depression in the ground, sometimes lined with a few blades of grass ; and before leaving it the old bird covers up the eggs with little pieces of stick. The eggs are pale stone ground-color, very thickly speckled with light and dark chocolate markings. The chick is finely mottled all over with light and dark brown." As far as species and individuals are concerned, the super-family now following, the SCOLOPACOIDE./E, makes up the bulk of the present order. The group is a rather well circumscribed one, though a few forms are still in dispute, since some authors, following Huxley and Forbes, are inclined to exclude the bustards and thick-knees as being holorhinal. The question is one of the many in systematic ornithology which cannot be settled at present, and the most judicious course is, probably, to establish a separate super-family for the bustards, equivalent to those of the snipes and the cranes. As the arrangement now is, the characters defining the groups are hardly absolutely trenchant, but may be said in general to be the presence of narrow and prominent basi- pterygoid processes and the slender and abruptly recurved process of the angle of the mandible in the Scolopacoideae. They are all schizorhinal, except the Otididoe and (Edienemidse. The myological formula of the schizorhinal forms is ABXY or AXY ; that of the holorhinal members, ABXY or BXY. The bill is elongated and compara- tively slender. The ratio of the phalanges of the toes is normal, that is, they diminish PR A TINCOLES. 95 in length from the basal phalange to the penultimate one. The pterylosis has no characteristic features. This super-family is equivalent to the ' order ' Limicoloe, as usually adopted, and the ' group ' Charadriomorphse of Huxley. The first family to meet us is that of the pratincoles or GLAREOLID^E, a small group of Old World birds of very peculiar appearance. They have long pointed wings _and a rather long, deeply forked tail, a feature quite iinique among Limicoline birds. To this is added a rather compressed bill and deeply split mouth, besides com- paratively short feet. On the whole they have a very great resemblance to some of the smaller terns both in flight and habits. Nothing is more certain, however, than FIG. 41. Glareola pratincola, common pratincole. that these birds are closely allied to the plovers, as also to members of the foregoing super-family, especially the Chionis, with which they agree in lacking occipital foramina and basipterygoid processes. That Linnaeus placed the common pratin- cole ( Glareola pratincola) in his genus Hirundo, on account of its forked tail and deeply split mouth, is perhaps not so strange. But that Sundevall, as late as 1874, denied the Charadriine affinities entirely, giving it place in the ' family ' Caprimul- ginae as an aberrant group of goat-suckers, referring, as he did, to the large size of the eyes, the form of the bill, the pectination of the long middle claw, and the somewhat sideways position of the hind toe, shows how unsafe it is to rely upon external char- acters alone in cases of intricate relationship. The species represented in the accom- 96 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. panying cut, Fig. 41, is the common pratincole, which is a regular summer visitor to the Mediterranean sub-region and the valley of the lower Danube, sometimes stragglino- northwards as far as Denmark and the British Islands. The color above is a fine mouse-gray, the breast is similarly only somewhat lighter colored, shading backward into buff and white ; chin and throat of a rusty yellowish buff circumscribed by a narrow velvety black band, which is set off by a white border ; the under wing-coverts 1 B>> FIG. 42. Eudromias morinellus, dotterel, and Charadrius apricarius, golden-plorer. and axillaries are beautiful chestnut; the bill is black, brilliant vermilion at base; feet reddish black. Size that of a small tern. The pratincole, says Mr. Seebohm, who made the acquaintance of this bird in the valley of Danube, in Greece, and Asia Minor, is an inhabitant of sandy plains, large marshes, and bare elevated country, spending a considerable portion of its time in the air, hawking for insects like a gigantic swallow, skimming along with graceful motion, wheeling and darting about, chasing its prey in all directions. Upon the ground it is equally at its ease, and runs GRALL^E. 97 to and fro with surprising swiftness, in spite of its short legs. The flight is described as swallow-like, or rather like that of the terns. The note, according to Seebohm, is a peculiar rattle, impossible to express on paper, though the principal sound may be represented by kr rapidly repeated. Naumann mentions a peculiar movement of this bird, which he says is exactly like the dipping of the body and jerking of the tail of the wheat-ear (/Saxicola otnanthe). The food of the pratincole consists exclu- sively of insects, and an allied species (G. melanoptera), differing in having black under win^-coverts, which occurs from southeastern Russia southwards as far as the S * Cape Colony, is highly estimated as a valuable destroyer of the grasshoppers, accord- ing to the interesting account given by the Austrian traveler, Mr. Holub. *gsi -W53fe* FIG. 43. Arenaria interpres, turns-tone. A small family, DROMADID.E, with a single living representative (Dromas ardeohi), may find a proper resting place here after having been knocked around between the herons and the terns. The aspect is that of a plover, or rather a thick-knee with a somewhat large and peculiar bill, and Temminck guessed pretty near the truth when he referred it to the neighborhood of the latter, for the Dutch zoologist, 3. van dor Hoeven, has shown that the skeleton is very much like that of the oyster-catcher, next to which we place it with the remark that it differs from the true Ch.aradi.idse in hav- ing no occipital foramina and no basipterygoid processes, in these respects agreeing with the foregoing families. The ' crab-plover ' inhabits shores from India, westward VOL. iv. 7 98 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. to Africa, and southward to the Seychelles and Madagascar. Its habits remind us both of the plover and the terns, and so do the unusually large eggs. The family CHAKADEIID^E, comprising the Plovers, forms a central and important group of the present order, pretty well circumscribed and homogeneous, though a number of outlying genera present rather trenchant characters, thereby tempting the system atist to establish groups of family rank for their reception. I refer to the coursers, the turnstones and the oyster-catchers, of which only the latter group has caused me some doubt. The turnstones (Arenaria) are somewhat peculiar, having a bill of a type different from the common plover bill, and present in the muscular formula of the leg, an unusual specialization, it being AXY against ABXY in the '" ' -'v /^mkr'/ l rO > FIG. 44. Hosmatopus ostralegus, oyster-catcher. rest. But the disappearance of the accessory femoro-caudal muscle cannot set off the fact that the genus Aphriza, the affinities of which in both directions are manifest, links the turnstones close to the plovers proper. The oyster-catchers (Hcematopus) are more isolated, having a peculiarly wedge-shaped bill and large supra-orbital de- pressions for the glands, but can hardly claim family rank, related as they are to the turnstones. The latter form a genus consisting of only two species, the blackheaded one (Arenaria melanocephcdus] , blackish and white, and exclusively Pacific, besides the common species (A. interpres), which is nearly cosmopolitan in its distribution, and dis- tinguished from the former by having rusty-brown margins to the feathers of the back and wings ; the feet are a beautiful vermilion red, and the bird is well represented in GRALLM. 99 the accompanying cut. Together with Pluvianellus sociabilis, from Magelhaen's Strait, and the surf-bird (Aphriza virgata), found on our western coast up to Alaska, they constitute the sub-family Areuariinie. The Hsematopodinae consists of a single genus, the different forms of which are distributed over nearly all the shores of the globe, except the very Arctic regions. There are two styles of them, one black and white, like the European oyster-catcher on the foregoing page, and another wholly black, both with intensely red beaks and reddish flesh-colored feet. They are *1S- ^ -s- c T^^ZZ- ~~"Jft. R-MLK1?. '. FIG. 45. Vanellus vaneltus, peewit, lapwing. very noisy and shy, and make themselves disagreeably conspicuous to the shore-hunter, warning all other birds with their penetrating cry. The ChavadriinaB proper are cosmopolitan in their distribution, embracing the dif- ent kinds of plovers, being the most numerous group of the family, and are partic- rly characterized by the form of the bill, which is somewhat like that of a pigeon, convex anteriorly and restricted at base. Being well-known birds we shall save space unusual forms by only referring to the drawings (Fig. 42), and by quoting the tollowmg, from Seebohm, concerning the peewit or lapwing (Vanellus vanelhts, ^ig. 45), which is a strictly Palsearctic bird, sometimes straggling to Greenland and The flight of this bird is very erratic and peculiar, 'its wings are very 100 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. long and broad, and it flaps them in a regular, sedate manner. Now it soars upwards for a few yards, seemingly without effort, then flapping its broad and rounded wings it wheels round and round ; then it darts rapidly down as if hurling itself to the ground, and then, mounting the air again, with easy grace flies in everchanging course, darting, wheeling, trembling, and reeling, as though beating time with its pinions to its wailing and expressive cries. The lapwing becomes particularly clamorous at night, and obtains much of its food in the dusk of the evening. At all hours its wild expressive call may be heard, as it floats on ever-moving pinions above its favorite haunts. Its common note resembles the syllables pee-weet, or iveet-a-weet, pee-weet-weet, from which is derived one of its best known names. The eggs of the lapwing are highly prized as articles of food, and a regular and extensive trade is done in them. Thousands find their way to the London markets in the season, and fetch from four to F IG . 46. _ Hoplopterus spinosus, spur-winged plover. ten shillings a dozen." This bird is one of the few waders that show metallic colors in their plumage, the general color of the upper parts being a greenish to coppery bronze. Remarkable for the strong and sharp spur at the bend of the wing is the so-called spur-winged plover (Hoplopterus spinosus), hairbrown, black and white, a native of Africa, where it is one of the commonest birds of the Nile valley, but it occurs also in southeastern Europe and the intermediate countries of western Asia, It claims the distinction of being the 'leech-eater' or ' trochilos ' of Herodotus, whose de- scription, which is as follows, may rather belong to the black-headed plover, or, as it is frequently called, 'the crocodile bird' (Pluviamis cegyptius), also a native of Egypt. "As the crocodile lives chiefly on the river, it has the inside of its mouth constantly covered with leeches ; hence it happens that, while all other birds and CROOK-BILL PLOVER. 101 beasts avoid it, with the trochilos it lives at peace, since it owes much to that bird, for the crocodile, when he leaves the water, and comes out upon the land, is in the habit of lying with his mouth wide open, facing the western breeze; and such times the trochi- los goes into his mouth and devours the leeches. This benefits the crocodile, who is pleased, and takes care not to hurt the trochilos" There is, however, some truth in the old fable, for Alfred E. Brehm, who, during his travels in northeastern Africa, studied the habits of these birds, asserts that he several times saw this plover without hesitation running up and down the back of the crocodile, as if it were a green lawn, in search of bugs and leeches, even daring to pick the teeth of its tremendous friend, that is, litei'ally to snatch away food particles which stuck between the teeth, or para- sitic animals which had attached themselves to the mandibles and the gums. Related to the last-mentioned bird, but on longer legs with shorter toes, a bill somewhat resembling that of the pratincole, and of an isabel color corresponding to the sand of the desert it inhabits, is the cream-colored courser (Cursorius cursor), found throughout the southern portion of the Mediterranean province, but known as a not uncommon straggler to the British Islands during the autumnal season. It lives on the arid sand-plains or on the bare elevated plateaus, where scarcely a tuft of scanty herbage or a bush is to be found. It loves to frequent the bases of sand-hills, and is sometimes seen in the miserable desert pastures or amongst the sand-dunes on the outskirts of the oasis. In these dismal uninteresting regions the courser trips about in pairs, or less frequently in little parties." Completely unique in the shape of the bill, and probably forming a small group of its own, is the so-called wry-billed, or crook-billed plover (Anarhynchus frontalis}, since the end of the bill is not bent down, nor recurved, but turned horizontally to the right, as shown in the accom- panying cut. It was discovered in New Zealand by the French natura- lists, Quoy and Gaimard, who, in 1833, published the first description of / , this curious bird. The type in the Paris museum remained unique until FlG _ 47 _ 1869, and the Anarhynchus became so apocryphal and dubious that G. R. Gray finally declared the alleged crook-bill to be an individual de- formity, an opinion shared by many ornithologists of that day. Never- theless, the strange crookedness proved to be the normal shape of the bill, the deflex- ion being obvious even in the chick in the egg. The singular beak is thus described by Mr. Potts from a fresh specimen : " Bill longer than the head, pointed, curved to the right or off side, curled slightly on itself in a leaf-like manner, a long groove on each side of the upper mandible ; the nostrils long, pierced not far from the base of the bill, fitted with a membranous pro- cess, which, apparently furnished with a system of nerves, extends some distance along the mandible ; interior of both upper and lower mandibles concave or sulcate, which form is maintained to the point ; thus the inside of the bill, when the man- dibles are closed, becomes a curved pipe, with a very slight twist. The tongue, when at rest, lies well within the lower mandible ; it is partly sulcate in form, tapers to a fine point, is much shorter than the beak, leaving a vacant space of six lines from its extremity to the end of the lower mandible ; the base is furnished on either side with a few spines (three or four), planted in the same direction as those in the roof of the upper mandible ; the thick portion of the tongue is indented with four or five very slight longitudinal furrows, terminating in the channel into which the tongue now resolves itself, till it ends at the very acute point ; this sulcate form is attained by the 102 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. edges being raised. From this peculiar form of tongue it may be observed that no hindrance is presented by that organ to the sucking up of water ; the spines would prevent the escape of the most slippery or minute prey, which could be crushed by the closing of the beak and the pressure of the tongue against the upper mandible, the water finding ready egress." The same gentleman, after having remarked that this bird is of frequent occur- rence near the streams or back waters of almost any of the rivers, which in their course disclose sandy spots and wide areas of shingle, continues thus : " A conside- ration of the natural features of its favorite haunts permits us to indulge in surmises as to the convenience and adaptation of its remarkable form of beak for obtaining its food. Where we have seen this bird it has never been far from water ; and if, as I presume, the species is peculiar to this country (New Zealand), I can point to our larger river-beds as affording it desirable feeding gi-ounds. These rapid shallow streams are perpetually wandering and shifting in their course, cutting new channels after every freshet, whether occasioned by heavy rainfalls or by the melting of snow from the alpine crests of the ' back country.' Any one acquainted with our ' plains ' must have observed, here and there, how certain parts (termed by the geologists 'fans') are thickly covered with stones, as, for instance, some miles below the gorges of the Rakaia and Rangitata. However unpromising or useless they may appear to the inexperienced, the practical grazier is aware that these stones assist in keeping the ground cool, and in retaining beneath them a certain amount of moisture, which dur- ing the drier portion of the year (when the parching northwest winds prevail) thus invigorates the thirsty rootlets of many valuable grasses, and the result is the main- tenance of a fair number of sheep on this rather barren-looking stretch of country. When any of these stones are disturbed from their bed, who can have failed to notice the commotion produced amongst the insect community thus suddenly disclosed to view ? What scuttling ensues to gain fresh concealment from the garish light of day ! In a somewhat similar manner, after a stream has deserted its temporary bed, numer- ous forms of aquatic insect life, attracted, in all probability, by the moisture, are to be found in the sand in which the shingle lies half embedded. The horny point of the bill of this bird, from its peculiar form, is sufficiently strong to be used for thrusting between and under stones and pebbles. The flexibility of the upper mandible, derived from the long grooves and flattened form (extending to nearly half its length), tends materially to assist the bird in fitting its curved bill close to a stone, and thus aids in searching or fossicking around or beneath the shingle for its food, while at the same time the closed mandibles would form a tube through which water and insects could be drawn up, as water is sucked up by a syringe. As the flexure of the bill is lateral, the bird is enabled to follow up retreating insects, by making the circuit of a water- worn stone, with far greater ease than if it had been furnished with the straight beak of the plover, or the long flexible scoop of the avocet. The inspection of these spe- cimens must clear away any little cloud of doubt that might remain on the minds of persons unfamiliar with the bird, and convince them that this singular form of bill, so far from being an accidental deformity, is a beautiful provision of nature, which con- fers on a plover-like bird the advantage of being able to secure a share of its food from sources whence it would be otherwise unattainable." Concomitant with the laterally deflected beak, is a curious asymmetry in the coloration of the plumage, which has been pointed out by Dr. Buller in the following interesting account : " As already explained, the curvature in the bill is congenital, being equally present in the J AC AN AS. 103 embryo chick, although not so fully developed, and this fact furnishes a beautiful illus- tration of the law of adaptation and design that prevails throughout the whole ani- mal kingdom. A bird endowed with a straight bill, or with an upcurved or decurved one, would be less fitted for the peculiar mode of hunting by which the Anarhynchus obtains its living, as must be at once apparent to any one who has watched this bird running rapidly round the boulders that lie on the surface of the ground, and insert- ing its scoop sidewise at every step, in order to collect the insects and their larvae that find concealment there. But there is another feature in the natural history of this species that is deserving of special notice. As already described, the fully adult bird is adorned with a black pectoral band, which, in the male, measures .75 of an inch in its widest part. Now it is a very curious circumstance that this band is far more conspicuous on the right-hand side, where, owing to the bird's peculiar habit of feed- ing, there is less necessity for concealment by means of protective coloring. This character is constant in all the specimens that I have examined, although in a vari- able degree ; the black band being generally about one third narrower, and of a less decided color on the left side of the breast, from which we may, I think, reasonably infer that the law of natural selection has operated to lessen the coloring on the side of the bird more exposed to hawks and other enemies whilst the Anarhynchus is hunting for its daily food. There can be no doubt that a protective advantage of this sort, however slight in itself, would have an appreciable effect on the survival of the fittest, and that, allowing sufficient time for this modification of character to develop itself, the species would at length, under certain conditions of existence, lose the black band altogether on the left-hand side." It is now generally conceded that E. Blyth was right when asserting that the JACANID^E are closely allied to the plovers, and that they consequently do not belong to the Rallidae, or rails, as has been nearly universally thought until recently. In their general aspect, the long toes, and the nearly incumbent hind toe, the ja9anas present great analogy to the rails, but the internal anatomy, the knowledge of which is mainly due to Garrod and Forbes, conclusively proves that they belong to the present super- family. Forbes remarks that, perhaps, no very definite conclusion as to their affinities could be drawn from a consideration of the pterylographic, visceral, and myological features only, but that their osteological characters leave no doubt as to their real position. All the skulls of Jacanidre examined by him are strongly schizorhinal, therein differing completely from those of the rails, and resembling the plovers and their allies. There are well-developed basipterygoid processes, which are always absent in the rails, though occurring in all the Charadriidae and Scolopacidaa which he examined. The vomer is emarginate apically, while in the RallidaB it is sharp at the point. From the Scolopacidre and Charadriidre the skull differs chiefly in lacking occipital foramina and supra-orbital impressions. The sternum is quite unlike that of the Eallidre. In the latter group the sternum is always peculiar, in that the xiphoid processes exceed in length the body of the sternum, which tapers to a point posteri- orly, and from which they are separated by very long and well-marked triangular notches. The keel is also less well-developed, and the clavicles are weaker and straighter, being less convex forward, than in the Jacanidre. The pelvis of the latter is also essentially plover-like, the ilia being wider and more expanded anteriorly, the postacetabular ridge having hardly any median projection, and the pelvis being widest dorsally, just behind the antetrochanters ; in these and other points differing from the rails. The toes are enormously elongated and so are the claws. Another external 104 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. character distinguishing the ja9nnns from the plovers and snipes is the number of rectrices, said to be ten in the former, against twelve or more in the latter. All the forms belonging to this very distinct family have a metacarpal 'spur,' which in the genera Jacana and Hydrophasianus is large and sharp, while in the others it is small and blunt. Of this spur Professor Forbes remarks, that it has no relation whatever to the claw or nail of the pollex, which is also present, though small. The spur in Jacana spinosa at least " consists of an external, translucent, yellow epidermic layer, which invests a central core of compact fibrous tissue, this in turn being supported by a bony projection developed at the radial side of the first metacarpal." This spur is a formidable Aveapon, but it seems that the forms in which it is small and blunt have received a compensation for the absence of a real spur in an extraordinary development of the radius. In birds, as a rule, this bone is slenderer than the ulna, but in the members of the genus Metopidius, and probably also in Uydralector cristatus, the radius is dilated and flattened into a sub-triangular lamellar- like expansion for its distal half, as shown in the accompanying cut. The margin of the bone, where it is superficial, is slightly roughened; and no doubt, as Forbes remarks, the peculiar form of radius is asso- ciated with the quarrelsome habits of these birds, this dilated and somewhat scirnetar- shaped bone being probably capable of inflict- ing a very severe downward blow. FIG. 48. Cubitus of Metopidius ; h, humerus ; r, The iacanas form a small family of tropi- radius ; u, ulna. _ J > cal birds, one genus, Jacana (or Parra, as it erroneously has been called by most ornithologists), of about four species, being tropical American, with one representative, J. gymnostoma, a native of Central America and Mexico, just entering the United States on the border of Texas; while the one figured is the commonest South American species ; another genus, Metopidius, is Indo-African in its distribution, and Hydralector is Malayan, while Hydrophasianus chirurgus, hails from India and the countries to the east, including the Philippine Islands and Formosa. The latter, which is the pheasant-tailed ja9ana of writers, is a remarkably striking bird. It is devoid of the naked lobes on the head, so character- istic of the true ja9anas, but is especially noticeable for the four enormously elongated tail-feathers, which are gracefully arched like those of a pheasant. The length of the bird is about eighteen inches, the tail alone measuring ten inches. On the authority of Blyth we introduce the following notice of their habits: "These birds breed during the rains, in flooded spots, where the lotus is plentiful, the pair forming a rude, flat nest of grass and weeds, interwoven beneath with the long shoots of some growing, aquatic plant, which retain it buoyant on the surface. Herein are laid six or seven olive-brown, pear-shaped eggs, of an inch and a quarter in length. Their slender bodies and widely extending toes enable ja9anas to run with facility, apparently on the water, but in reality, wherever any floating leaves or green herbage ineets their light tread. The food consists of the green, tender paddy, or other vegetable growth, dependent on inundation for its production, and the numerous species of insects that abound in such spots. The cry is like that of a kitten in distress, whence their native name of meewah. In flight, the legs are trailed behind like those of the herons. The flesh is excellent." Blyth adds that he has sometimes seen it to all appearance walk- ing on the water, the supports on which its long toes really rested being slight and little visible. Legge says that in Ceylon it is wonderfully numerous on the northern SNIPES. 105 tanks in the ""Wanny" district, their musical notes resounding all day and all night long through the picturesque forests on their borders. These sounds are essentially typical of the wild regions in the northern forests of this island, and must always associate themselves in the mind of the naturalist with his wanderings in Ceylon. The snipes, sandpipers, curlews, etc., form another and still larger family than the plovers, being known as the SCOLOPACID.E, a group of considerable homogeneity, :md chiefly characterized by the long, thin, and flexible bill, which is covered by a soft skin, at the end richly provided with nerves that make the bill a very sensitive probe FIG. 49. Jacana spinosa, jayana. fit to detect in the soft mud and extricate the worms and animalcules upon which they feed. Otherwise they agree pretty much with the Charadriidae, having a similar pterylosis, and similar muscular and intestinal arrangements. Like those they also possess occipital foramina, basipterygoid processes and supra-orbital impressions. Distributed all over the world, from the icy regions of the north pole to the equa- tor, the snipe tribe populates the sea-shores, the river-banks, the swamps and marshes, while a few only as, for instance, the woodcock prefer the drier woodlands to moister localities near the water. 106 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. We mentioned above that the present family resembles the Charadriidae as to the muscular arrangement, but we should have qualified the statement in regard to the muscles of the legs by saying that the myological formula is reversed in the two fami- lies, that is to say, that while in the plovers ABXY is the rule, and AXY the excep- tion, so is among the snipes the latter combination the usual one, while only few have all four muscles. Noticeable among the snipes having this more generalized muscular arrangement ai-e the curlews, a small group, the external characters of which are alone sufficient to warrant us in assigning them a somewhat separate position ; for the Numeniinre are characterized by a very long and stiongly decurved bill, and by having the tarsus entirely reticulate, or scutellate only for the lower half of the front. FIG. 50. Numenius arquatus, cm'lew. As an additional character may be quoted their comparatively short tongue. The tarsus is totally reticulate in the Asiatic genus, IbidorhyncJia, in which, besides, the hind toe is absent, thus to a certain degree justifying the saying that it is a snipe with the bill of an ibis and the feet of a plover. Of this very remarkable form only one species, the red-billed curlew (I. struthersii), is known. It was originally obtained in the Himmalehs, but recent explorations in central Asia have shown that it inhabits sandy river banks from Pekin in the east to Turkestan, or perhaps the Kirghis steppes in the west. Its coloration is entirely different from that of the curlews of the genus Numenius, which are of a more or less rusty gray with dusky spots all over, while in Ibidorhyncha the back is olive colored, the under side pure white, witli the top of SANDPIPERS. 107 he:ul, face, and throat black, as is also a band across the breast; bill and feet vivid red. The arctogaean genus (Numenius}, consists of four-toed curlews, the migratory habits, extreme shyness, and culinary excellency of which are well known to the sportsman. They range in size from that of the domestic fowl to that of the wood- cock. Five species are enumerated as belonging to North America, among these the curious N. tahitensis, in which the shafts of the thigh-feathers are prolonged into thin and long, glossy bristles. It inhabits especially the Pacific islands, and has been taken twice in Alaska as an accidental straggler. In the following sub-family, the Recurvirostrinse, the length of bill and feet, espe- cially that of the latter, is carried to an extreme, but, unlike the curlews, the bill is either straight or bent upwards, and in both cases very much pointed. Those with straight bills are called stilts ; those with the beak recurved, avocets. The tarsus is covered in front by reticulate scales. They are tropical or subtropical in their distri- bution. The species are not numerous and are referable to three genera, the distin- o-uishino- characters of which Mr. Seebohm has tabulated in the following ingenuous O ^ and laconic way : ( Eecurvirostra, Feet webbed . . . . j ciadorhynchus, , Himantopus, > .... Hind toe absent. He mio-ht as well have said "Bill not recurved" instead of "Hind toe absent," how- S ever. This table confronts us with one of the peculiarities of some of the forms, their fully palmate feet being unique among limicoline birds. Ciadorhynchus is confined to Australia, the two other genera occur both in the Old and the New World, and in the latter both in North and in South America. A still smaller sub-family comprises the three species of Phalaropes, small, rather short-billed, and short-legged birds, with the tip of the bill pointed and the toes fur- nished with a lateral membrane, which is more or less lobate. The Phalaropodinse are more oceanic during their migrations than most birds of this sub-family, and swim with grace and ease. They are arctic and circumpolar in their distribution, wander- ing far southward in winter. O The central group of the Scolopacidse is formed by an assemblage of birds, of mostly plain grayish or brownish plumage, spotted with dusky, and more or less white underneath, among which are the sanderlings, the godwits, tattlers, sandpipers, the knot, the dotterel, and many other familiar birds. We call this assemblage Tringinas assigning to them as characters the absence of those features which have been pointed out as peculiar to the foregoing groups, adding that they differ from the fol- lowing sub-family the true snipes in having the eyes placed normally. On the whole, the structure of the members is very normal, excessive developments and spe- cializations in any direction being unusual. In this respect the curious spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmceus) is a noteworthy exception. The end of its bill is greatly depressed and flattened out, so as to form a broad spade much more dispro- portionate than the similar formation of the spoon-bill or the shoveller. This bird, which is about the size of the dunlin, and normally sandpiper-colored, is very limited in its distribution and correspondingly rare in collections. It seems to breed some- where in the neighborhood of Bering Strait, whence most of the specimens have been obtained, traveling south in fall, and wintering on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The habits of the sandpipers are, on the whole, not greatly diversified, although, of 108 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. course, each species has peculiarities of its own. They need, however, not detain us here, with the exception of one feature which does not seem to be generally known, viz., that some of the species during the breeding season are capable of producing a real song, which is considerably superior to that of many a " song-bird " proper. Says Mr. Seebohm, for instance, of Actodromas temminckii: "I first made the acquaint- ance of Temminck's stint at Tromsce, on the west coast of Finmark, where it was very common. These charming little birds were in full song in the middle of June. It was a most interesting sight to watch them flying up into the air, wheeling round and round, singing almost as vigorously and nearly as melodiously as a sky-lark. Some- times they were to be seen perched on a rail or a post, or even on the slender branch of a willow, vibrating their little wings like a wood-wren, and trilling with all their might; and often the song was uttered on the ground as they ran along the short grass with wings elevated over the back. The song of this bird is not unlike that of the grasshopper warbler, but is louder and shriller." Of Totanus glareola, the wood- sandpiper of the Old World, the same author says : " The note which the male utters during the pairing season is much more of a song than that of the grasshopper war- bler, which it somewhat resembles; it is a monotomous til-il-il., begun somewhat low and slow, as the bird is descending in the air with fluttering upraised wings, becom- ing louder and more rapid, and reaching its climax as the bird alights on the ground or on a rail, or sometimes on the bare branch of a willow, the points of its trembling wings almost meeting over its head when its feet find support. This song is a by no means unmusical trill, and has an almost metallic ring about it." Concerning another species, the pectoral sandpiper (Actodromns maculatus), Mr. E. W. Nelson made some very interesting notes during his explorations in Alaska, to the effect that the male, during the breeding season, can fill its oesophagus with air to such an extent that the breast and throat are inflated to twice or more the natural size, the great air-sac thus formed giving a peculiar resonant quality to the note which lie describes as deep and hollow, but at the same time liquid and musical. The skin of the throat and breast becomes very flabby and loose, so as to hang down " in a pen- dulous flap or fold, exactly like a dewlap, about an inch and a half wide," even when not inflated. " The male may frequently be seen running along the ground close to the female, its enormous sac inflated, and its head drawn back, and the bill pointing directly forwards ; or, filled with spring-time vigor, the bird flits with slow but ener- getic wing-strokes close along the ground, its head raised high over the shoulders, and the tail hanging almost directly down. As it thus flies, it utters a succession of the booming notes adverted to above, which have a strange ventriloquial quality. At times the male rises twenty or thirty yards in the air, and, inflating its throat, glides down to the ground with its sac hanging below ; again he crosses back and forth in front of the female, puffing out his breast, and bowing from side to side, running here and there as if intoxicated with passion. Whenever he pursues his love-making, his rather low but far-reaching note swells and dies in musical cadence, and forms a striking part of the great bird chorus at that season in the north." When speaking above of the uniformity in structure and habits of the birds com- posing this sub-family, a mental reservation was made in regard to the ruff (Pavon- cella pugnaV) . The male, during the breeding season, has the face covered with naked yellowish tubercles, and an enormous ruff of erectile feathers appears simultaneously on the neck. The colors of this ruff especially, as well as of the body, are so diver- sified that hardly two individuals can be found precisely alike, though it is said that RUFF. 109 these infinite variations may be reduced to thirty-three typical ones, the remainder being to all appearance intermediate forms or crosses. The accompanying cut ives only an inadequate idea of its peculiar aspect at this season, but will serve as an illus- tration for the following account, the excellency of which may be an excuse for a^nin introducing Mr. Seebohm : "There are two points of special interest attaching to the history of the ruff, which are probably intimately connected with each other. One of them is the extraordinary variety of the plumage of the males in the breeding season, and the other is the fact that the ruff is polygamous. It is said that the females largely outnumber the males. Naumann estimates the proportion as three to one, and this discrepancy is confirmed by African collectors. The males contend in FIG. 51. Pavoncellapugnax, ruif. single combat for the right of being ' cock of the walk,' and for this purpose battle- fields are chosen, like the ' laking-places ' of the capercaillie and the blackcock. These are sometimes on a slight elevation, but usually are nothing more than a spot of open ground in the mai-sh, where a patch of level short grass is to be found, four or five feet across, and so situated that it may be exposed to the view of the admiring females. The same piece of ground is chosen year after year, and Naumann mentions an instance of one which had been thus used for half a century. Frequently two or three duels are going on at once on the ground, but they seldom last long. After what looks like furious sparring, the weaker cock retires from the ' hill,' seldom, any worse for the fray, and the conqueror awaits another foe. These cock-fights are not commenced until the ruff or collar is fully grown, which is seldom before the middle 110 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. of May, and are discontinued as soon as the feathers on the neck begin to fall out, which happens about six weeks later. Soon after sunrise is the best time to observe them, but I have watched them in Russia and in Holland as late as eleven in the fore- noon. The excitement of the birds is intense ; they stoop with their heads low, and their ruffs expanded, and fly at each other like game-cocks, but, unlike those birds, they fight with the bill and not with the foot. The warts on the side of the face of the ruff only remain during the spring, and, doubtless, serve as a protection against the sword-thrusts of their adversaries." The Scolopacinre are birds of the twilight, and, like all birds of similar habits, are structurally adapted to their peculiar manners of life. Thus, the plumage is soft, and the coloration has that curiously mottled character which we will find in the owls and goat-suckers. The eyes are large and full, but in order to give them place in the little snipe-head without diminishing the ears, which also are of great importance to noc- turnal birds, the eyes have been pushed so far behind in the skull as to be situated just above the ear-openings. The bill is very long, flexible, and covered with a soft skin, richly supplied with nerves. The tarsus, like that of the Tringinre, is scutellate both in front and behind. The snipes proper, including the so-called woodcocks, are cosmopolitan in their distribution, and of migratory habits in cold climates, the many different species being of a bewildering similarity. A curious feature of these birds is, that a number of species present strangely modified tail-feathers, the number of which is often enormously increased over the normal, for instance, Gallinago stenura, from eastern Asia. This abnormality of the tail-feathers in many forms has been taken as an argument in favor of the theory that the bleating sound of the common snipe (Gallinago gallinago), is produced by aid of the rectrices. Others have contended tli at the wing-feathers are the instrument by which it imitates so closely the goat, and bitter discussions have been carried on between eminent ornithologists for more than twenty years. Together with several distinguished observers, I hold that the sound usually emanates from the throat, but that its bleating quality is produced by the vibration of the wings when the bird descends from its height. We quote the following from our own experience : - "Very often the snipe would rise so high in the air as to become almost invisible to the unaided eye, but still the strange sound rang vigorously down to the observer. Not only this power of the sound, but even more so the nature of the tune itself, con- vinced me that it originates from the throat, and not in any way either from the tail or the wing feathers, as suggested by many European writers. It is true that the wings are in a state of very rapid vibration during the oblique descent when the note is uttered, but this circumstance does not testify only in favor of the theory of the sound being produced by the wing, as the vibration most conclusively accounts for the quiv- ering throat-sound. Anybody stretching his arms out as if flying, and moving them rapidly up and down, and simultaneously uttering any sound, is bound to ' bleat.' ' This group includes a small, strongly-defined genus which we designate by its oldest name as Itostratnla, more commonly known as Rhynclma. The geographical distri- bution is somewhat remarkable, a representative species being found in each of the following provinces : Africa and Madagascar, India and south-eastern Asia, Australia and southern South America. It will be observed that this peculiar distribution is similar to that of many isolated forms; for instance, the Jacanidoe, Heliornithida3, Trogonidce, Dendrocygna, Plotus, etc., affording a valuable hint as to the origin and past distribution of these more or less ' aberrant ' forms. Rostratula has other peculi- PA INTED-SNIPE. Ill arities, however, not the least interesting being the fact that the secondary sexual char- acters are completely reversed, the female being considerably larger and more brilliantly colored than the male. In addition to this the females "deputize the duty of incuba- tion to the other sex, and reserve the business of courting to themselves." Still more remarkable is that, in the female of R. benyalensis, the windpipe is more or less tortu- ous, forming a distinct loop lying between the integument and the inter-clavicular membrane on the left side," while in the male it is straight and simple ; for, as Darwin says, whenever " the trachea differs in structure in the two sexes it is more developed and complex in the male than in the female." The arrangement is even more extra- ordinary in the female of the Australian species (M. australis), in which, according to FIG. 52. Rostratula capensis, painted-snipe. Gould, the trachea passes down between the skin and the muscles of the breast for the whole length of the body, making four distinct convolutions before entering the lungs. The painted-snipe, as the species is called, is well represented in the accompanying cut. The predominating color is olivaceous, with buff and black markings, underneath olivaceous, brown, and white. Blyth states that the Asiatic species, when surprised, has the habit of spreading out its wings and tail, and so forming a sort of radiated disk which shows off its spotted markings, menacing the while with a hissing sound and contracted neck, and then suddenly darting off. While all the foregoing families of the Charadroid types are schizorhinal, the two following ones are distinguished as being holorhinal. On account of this arrangement of the nostrils they have by some systematists been removed from this superfamily 112 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. and placed near the rails, but the total sum of characters seems to demand that the bustards and thick-knees be left with the Limicolae, as a kind of connecting link 7 O between these and the rails and cranes. The (EmcjiTEMiDJE in English called thick-knees, stone-curlews, or, better, stone- plovers have the general aspect of large plovers, with a rather long bill, the gonydeal angle of which is strongly pronounced. The wings are pointed, the tarsi are reticu- lated, and the hind toe absent. The number of forms composing this family is small. Their distribution is inter-tropical on both hemispheres, and no species belongs to the fauna of North America, while a single species, (Edicnemus cedicnemus, extends its range into southern and central Europe, including England. Like its congeners it IF****? T~ -7 /- - f ~ .^ ' ' ' - , _ , FIG. 53. (Edicnemus cedicnemus, stcme-plover, thick-knee. frequents the lowland heaths and bare lands where it has an unobstructed view all round. Its habits are to a great extent nocturnal, and it is particularly at nightfall and on moonlight nights that its clamorous voice is heard when out in search for food, ^j Zj * which coneists of insects, snails, etc. Mr. C. C. Nutting, who collected in Nicaragua, gives the following account of the Central American species, (E. bistiratus : " This curious bird is gregarious, and lives in the pastures surrounding the hacienda, where it makes itself useful by eating the various insects that annoy and injure the cattle. On this account it is protected by the inhabitants of the country, and it was only as a particular favor that I could per- suade 'Don Alejandro' to allow me to shoot a couple of specimens. The bird is exactly like a gigantic plover in appearance and motions, and is frequently seen in a GRALLM. state of domestication in the little flower-gardens which occupy the inner courts of the houses of the aristocracy, and here it works for its living by keeping the garden clear of insects, worms, reptiles, etc." The Indian and Australian genus, Esacus, is characterized by its much larger bill. Its coloring is gray above, whitish beneath, with no spots. In size it is considerably larger than the stone-plovers, and equal to that of the smaller bustards. The OTIDID^E, or bustards, compose the second holorhinal family, forming a well- circumscribed group, externally characterized by the short, somewhat vaulted bill without prominent chin angle, the long and stout legs finely reticulated anteriorly and behind. The toes are very short and stout, their number only three, and Forbes failed in discovering even a trace of the hind toe underneath the skin. In their gen- O O eral aspect these birds closely resemble the gallinaceous type, which in their habits they also recall to a certain extent. Some of the species are very large, the size ranging from that of a turkey to that of a willow-ptarmigan, being generally very stoutly built. Notwithstanding this apparent clumsiness the bustards fly well, and run with amazing swiftness, which once caused them to be included with the Ostriches in an " order " called Cursores. They are, consequently, especially adapted to the open country, and are, in fact, " the birds of the steppes par excellence" Their food is chiefly vegetable, thus differing widely from most of the members of the present order. It is strange that, notwithstanding the fact of some of the species occuring and breeding in central Europe, the question whether these birds are polygamous, as has been asserted, or not, cannot be said to be finally settled yet, though the nega- tive evidence seems to be the stronger. The family belongs exclusively to the Old World, no form being found in America. The centre of distribution of its about O thirty-five species may be said to be Africa, but many species occur in central and southern Asia, and two are regular inhabitants of the temperate lowlands of Europe. Also Australia has its representation, but it is a significant fact that bustards are absent in Madagascar and the Malay Islands. Of structural peculiarities in this group may be mentioned that several species have a gular pouch with an opening under- neath the tongue. This pouch is capable of being inflated. It is especially well developed in the great bustard of Europe ( Otis tarda), and much speculation as to its use has been indulged in. Some thought it a water-reservoir, while others, from the fact that sometimes a few seeds or some trifling quantity of grass have been found in it, believed that it was used as a receptacle for food. There is no doubt any longer, however, that the presence of this sac during the breeding season is simply a secondary sexual character, and that it is only a temporary air-chamber, to be inflated and dis- tended during the " showing off." Not less interesting is the fact that the pouch is absent in many species, and that a simple distension of the oesophagus in some results in the neck swelling and depending in a similar manner. Another anatomical peculi- arity is that members of the genus Eupodotis have only one carotid artery, the right one, while in other birds with only one carotid it is the left that is present. Many of the species are adorned with strutting bristles, ruffs, or feather-tufts. One of the smallest species is the one figured, the little bustard (0. tetras}, of common occurrence in southern Europe, and not larger than a grouse. Another species which also occurs in Europe, though only as an accidental straggler, is the western Asiatic houbara (Honbara macqueenii). How this bird, which is intermediate in size between the great and the little bustards, is chased by the aid of the camel, may be of interest to the sportsman, and the following is therefore borrowed from Hume's VOL. iv. 8 114 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. " Game Birds of India." " It is weary work trudging on foot, under an" Indian sun, after birds that run as these can and will, and in the districts where they are plentiful, people always either hawk them or shoot them from camels. Taking the camel at a long, easy, six miles an hour trot across one of those vast wildernesses they affect, you will not be long before raised high up as you are on camel-back you catch sight of one or more houbara feeding amongst the bushes. To them camels have no evil import; everybody uses them; none but the veriest pauper walks, every one rides, V^fxK'l. I 3 Ai ^sk -ty/ %' : , ife ':'>,: ^Ppf ; ' ^Siimi^ y FIG. 54. Otis tetrax, little bustard. and rides camels. When, therefore, the houbara see you coming along on a camel, they only move a little aside, so as to be out of your line of march, and you at once begin to describe a large spiral round them, so that, while appearing always to be passing away from them, you are really always closing in on them. Sometimes, if the time be early or late, or if the day be cold or cloudy, long before you are within shot, they start off running, and, if you press them further, ultimately take wing, flying heavily, and soon re-alighting and running on, never, so far as I have seen, taking the SUN-BITTERNS. 115 long flights that the great bustard does, and never fluttering and skylarking in the air as do the little ones. Generally, however, if the time be between ten and four, and the day bright and warm, as your spiral diminishes, the birds disappear suddenly. They have squatted. Still you go on round and round, closing in, in each lap, and straining your eyes, usually in vain, to discover their whereabouts ; suddenly, perhaps from under the very feet of the camel, up flutters one of the birds, and, after a few strides, rises, to fall dead a few yards further on, as they are easy to hit and easy to kill. At the first shot all the houbara that are at all close usually rise; but after shooting a brace right and left, and having them picked up and slung, I have known a third to blunder up from within a few yards. The way they will squat at times on an absolutely bare patch of sand is astonishing; their plumage harmonizes perfectly with the soil, and you will have a bird rise suddenly, apparently out of the earth, within five yards of you, from a spot where there is not a blade of cover, and on which your eyes have perhaps been fixed for some seconds. This is especially the case about mid-day, when the sun is nearly vertical, and no shadow is thrown by the squatting bird. Sometimes they try another plan: they get behind a single bush, and as you circle round they do the same, always keeping the bush between themselves and the sportsman. Here, xinless the sun be quite vertical, their shadow projected on the ground, apart from that of the bush, is sure, at certain positions in the circle, to betray them, and a shot through the bush brings them to bag." Like most of the erratic and isolated types of birds, the members constituting the super-family EURYPYGOIDE^E have been hunted round the ornithological system from order to order, until, of late, anatomical researches have proved their mutual relationship and their remoteness from the forms with which they were more or less commonly associated. As long as external characters alone were relied upon, the sun- bitterns were considered rails by some, herons by others; while the curious Mesites was in turn one of the Passeres and a Gallinaceous bird. When the anatomists finally decided their relationship and united with them the kagu, placing them all near the Scolopacoid birds, more nearly related inter se than to any other group, the verdict had to be, and to a great extent has been, accepted by ornithologists at large. In the first place these birds are schizorhinal, and furthermore they lack occipital foramina, basipterygoid processes, and supraorbital impressions. To these important characters of the skull, besides important ones from other parts of the body, for instance, the comparatively low insertion of the hind toe, may be added the presence of powder-down patches among the feathers, a feature elsewhere only met with in the herons, some parrots, goatsuckers, hawks, and a few others. Three families compose the super-family, each of which are represented by a single genus only, the genera again being nearly monotypieal. The sun-bitterns are South American, Ehynochetos is from the island of New Caledonia in the Polynesian Archi- pelago, and Mesites is peculiar to Madagascar. This distribution is considerably disconnected, and seems at first glance to oppose the view of the relationship of these birds, but we need only refer to what has been said on a previous page, under Rostratula, in order to show that the peculiar geographical distribution of these forms, the antiquity of which cannot be doubted, is rather in favor of the present arrange- ment, and they can only be regarded as the last survivors of a group which, simulta- neously with others of similarly old-fashioned aspect, once populated continents now sunk, or inhabited by forms of a more modern type. Just how the ancestors of the recent Limicolae, on one hand, and the cranes and rails, on the other, branched off 116 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. from that common stock of wtich we here see the more or less direct descendants, will not be ascertained before the embryology of all these forms shall be known, and perhaps not even then. Nor may we expect much from future palreontological discoveries; here and there a find may throw some light upon affinities and the history of development, but the gaps are great and many. We will therefore, for the present at least, have to content ourselves with such reasonable probabilities as can be derived from the comparative anatomy and the geographical distribution. The sun-bitterns, family EUKYPYGIDJE, genus JEurypyga^ as already indicated, are South American birds of a rather peculiar appearance, something between a rail and FIG. 55. Eurypyga helias, sun-bird, sun-bittern. a heron, though the long tail, the ample, broad wings, and the peculiar coloration at first glance distinguishes them from both. Referring to the cut for further details of external structure and for the general aspect, we need only mention in regard to col- oration that the sun-bird, as it is also called, is beautifully variegated with white, brown, and black bands and mottlings, the head being black with white marks. The eye is red, bill and feet yellow. The feathers are soft, and the shafts of those on the back and rump are extremely fine and delicate in the centre, which causes the tips of each feather to turn the reverse way directly the bird is dead. Another remarkable fea- ture is the extremely thin neck. The sun-bitterns inhabit the banks of the great KAGU. rivers and are said to be very shy. Nevertheless, they are easily tamed, and travelers assert that they are often kept in captivity by the natives inhabiting the valleys of the Amazon and Orinoco. They are therefore often found in the zoological gardens, where they thrive very well. They bred first in the London Zoological Garden, and from the account by the superintendent, Mr. A. D. Bartlett, we select the following concerning this event: "Early in the month of May, 1865, they began to show si 3 o CD J ta ^ a o 1- P > t^ 6 W % V> 1-5 S3 s Co S 8S a o 3 3 o a >-i O T3 CD -f 3 CD CRANES. 125 the approach of the V-shaped flight above. The four birds in the foreground, having the peculiar crest or crown on top of the head, much like that of a peacock, are the northwest African crowned-crane (Balearica pavoniiid) ; the southern species, H. chrysopelargus, having a large, pendulous, naked throat-lappet. In this genus the windpipe is simple and does not enter the keel. The light-colored bird to the left, in front of the others, is a ' demoiselle ' or ' Numidian ' crane ( Tetrapterix, or Antro- poides virgo), of which a better representation will be found on the full-page cut of the BalcKniceps rex, in the upper right-hand corner (facing p. 172). Like the other cranes, the demoiselle, which occurs from Mongolia in the east to northern Africa in the west, is fond of dancing, as described in the following graphic account of the Russian naturalist, Prof, von N'ordmann : " They arrive in the south of Russia about the beginning of March, in flocks of between two and three hundred individuals. O ^j * Arrived at the end of their journey, the flocks keep together for some time, and even when they have dispersed in couples, they re-assemble every morning and evening, preferring in calm weather to exercise themselves together, and amuse themselves by dancing. For this purpose they choose a convenient place, generally the flat shore of a stream. There they place themselves in a line, or in many rows, and begin their games and extraordinary dances, which are not a little surprising to the spectator, and of which the account would be considered fabulous were it not attested by men worthy of belief. They dance and jump around each other, bowing in a burlesque manner, advancing their necks, raising the feathers of the neck-tufts, and half unfolding the wings. In the meantime another set are disputing, in a race, the prize for swiftness. Arrived at the winning-post they turn back, and Avalk slowly and with gravity ; all the rest of the company saluting them with reiterated cries, inclinations of the head, and other demonstrations, which are recipi'ocated. After having done this for some time, they all rise in the air, where, slowly sailing, they describe circles, like the swan and other cranes. After some weeks these assemblies cease, and from that time they are seen constantly walking in loving pairs together." It would not do to leave the cranes without having given the readers a taste of J. ^J C7 Wolley's account of the breeding of the crane in Lapland, which Professor Newton has styled " one of the most pleasing contributions to natural history ever written," and I only regret that want of space prohibits the reproduction of it unabridged. Wolley, in 1853, went to Swedish Lapland in order to find out, among other things, whether the young crane, on first leaving the egg, is helpless like a young heron, or able to run about like the young of most waders and Gallinaceous birds, and to observe the breeding habits for himself. He came after the birds were hatched, but he satis- fied himself that the young cranes, after leaving the eggs, could run about. He had to wait a year to get the eggs. Here are his words: "The following year, 1854, on the 20th of May, I went with only Lud wig my servant-lad to look for the crane's nest in ^0fefe= FIG. 68. Branta bernicla, common brant. America, where several handsome species, peculiar by the metallic reflections of the wing speculum, have their home. One of these, Chlcephaga melanoptera, inhabits the high Andes of Peru and Boli- via, as high up as 14,000 feet above the sea-level, and has not been met with south of 35 south latitude. It descends in winter to the plains, but retires in summer to the high Cordillera, to the verge of the line of perpetual snow. Another beautiful species is the emperor-goose (Philacte canagicci), from islands in Bering's Sea and Alaska. Be- sides these there are numerous other kinds, of which we can only mention the names, the red-breasted brant (Eufibrenta ruficollis), from eastern Siberia, the barred-headed goose (Eulabeia indicci), from India, the swan-goose (Cygnopsis cygnoides), from China, the Hawkesbury bernicle ( Chlamydochen jubata), from Australia, etc. We will have to stop a moment, however, to consider a genus, containing only a few diminutive species of geese, the so-called goslets (Nettepus), of which representatives SWANS. 143 are found in South Africa,, Madagascar, India, and Australia. Notwithstanding their size, which is not greater than that of a teal, they are true geese with a typical bernicle bill. They are excellent swimmers, however, and pass the greater part of their life on the water, thus differing from most other geese. The Indian species (A 7 ^ coromandelicus), is described as having a peculiar .shuffling gait when on land, as " after walking a few steps they always squat." Jerdon thinks it probable that in the wild state they never alight on the land. The swans are distinguished by the extraordinary elongation of the neck, Avhich is affected by the great number of cervical vertebrae, arid not by their being unusually lengthened, as is the case with most other long-necked birds. There are no occipital foramina as in most other ducks, and the pelvis is considerably lengthened and rather narrowed in the postacetabular region. The feet are placed far back, indicating that the swans are more at home on the water than on the land, as is also evident from the shortness of the tarsus. The base of the bill, which is anatine in its form, and the loral region are naked in the adults. The swans are highly ornamental on ponds and lakes, and several of the species are kept in semi-domestication for that purpose, especially those with a gracefully curved neck. They inhabit the temperate regions both north and south of the equator, one genus with one species being peculiar to Australia, one to South America ; one genus is circumpolar, and the fourth is Palaaarc- tic ; Africa alone has no swans at the present day, This group is apparently nearer related to the ducks proper than to the geese, but from the caverns of Malta is known a gigantic fossil form, Palceocygnus falconeri, which, on account of its high, stout, and short-toed feet, seems to take an intermediate position between geese and swans. The discovery of Australia altered many an Old World notion in regard to ani- mals and plants, and the saying " white as a swan " had to be modified when the Aus- tralian black swan {Chenopis atrata) was discovered towards the end of the last century. It is a most beautiful species ; the neck is very long and thin, its curvature very graceful, and the inner Aving-feathers are curled and raised ; the color is entirely dull black, with white on the wing ; the eye is red, and the bill vivid carmine, adorned with a white cross-band. It is entirely acclimatized in the northern hemi- sphere. The white swans of the genus Olor, of which two species are peculiar to the Palsearctic region and two to this continent, do not carry their neck in an S-like curve as do the other forms, but straight, more after the fashion of the geese. They have a loud and sonorous voice, the resonant quality of which is due to the convolutions of the windpipe within the breast-bone, similar to the arrangement already described in some cranes. The trumpeters or whistling-swans breed chiefly in the Arctic regions, mi- grating southwards in winter. Somewhat similar in appearance, on account of the dazzlingly white plumage, but differing in having a most elegantly S-like neck, a high frontal knob, wedge-shaped tail, and simple windpipe, is the European so-called tame or mute-swan (Ci/ynus gibbus), the habitat of which seems to be the western temper- ate portion of the Palrearctic region. When this snow-white bird with the scarlet bill is leisurely swimming, the wing-feathers half raised like sails, and the neck doubly curved, it certainly is one of the most majestic and beautiful members of the feathered tribes. Among water birds it has no rival on the northern half of the globe, and it is very doubtful if it does not even excel the South American black-necked swan (Stlienelides melancorypka), the exquisite grace of which is beyond description. The plumage of the last-mentioned species is of the purest white, except on the head and neck, which are of a velvety seal-brown of the darkest shade, in the most striking con- 144 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. trast. The bill, which bears a double frontal knob at base, is light plumbeous ; the knob, intense rose-color, the nail whitish ; the legs are flesh-colored. This species, the smallest of the swans, inhabits South America, from Chili, across the continent, and southward to Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands. Mr. Gibson gives some notes on its occurrence and habits in Buenos Ayres, from which we select the follow- ing : " As there are a great many swamps and fens here, it is but natural that all the water-fowl should be represented in extraordinary numbers; and accordingly even FIG. 69. Chenopis atrata, Australian black swan. swans are nearly as abundant with us as ducks are in other districts. I have counted about two hundred on one small lagoon in a swamp ; and the latter is but one in a whole network of swamps and watercourses. Another great fen, bordering our land, is known as the Canada de Cisneros, or Swamp of the Swanneries, an eminently suggestive name for the oologist, one which its character well bears out. About the besrinnino; O ' o O of the century, the first Christians (so-called in contradistinction to the Indians) who reached this district were Gauchos, who, in pursuit of swans for the sake of their skins, DUCKS. 145 made occasional excursions from inside the frontiers. Their weapon was the 'bolea- dores,' or balls, of the same nature as those used for catching cattle and horses, and which are now sufficiently well known for me to dispense with a description of them. These ' swan-balls ' differed only in being made of wood, so that they should float on the water if the Gaucho missed his aim. The swans were tamer and easier to ap- proach then, and the rider took care always to come down the wind, getting within forty or fifty yards before they took the alarm. Then a desperate push, if the water was not too deep, would gain another ten yards, as the swans are taken at the disad- vantage of being compelled to rise doivn the wind. The balls are whirled, thrown, and, twisting round the wings and neck of the bird selected, render it quite helpless. Nowadays it is difficult to get within gunshot-range without regular stalking. It nests very early, July and September, however, being the favorite months. The posi- tion chosen is always in one of the largest and deepest swamps, the nest being placed among the thickest rushes, at some distance from one of the lagoons, but connected with it by a lane of clear water; for the birds always leave the nest by swimming. It is built from the bottom of the swamp, sometimes through four or five feet of water, above the surface of which it rises a foot or a foot and a half. The diameter at the top is about two feet. The general clutch of eggs is either three or four. They are of a smooth, glossy cream-color." The Anatinse comprise the group of sub-family rank, which, with a general term, we call ' ducks,' including within it tree-ducks, river-ducks, sea-ducks, and a few minor sec- tions, which at present we cannot satisfactorily place elsewhere. The common char- acter is the shape of the bill which is constructed upon the plan of that of the tame duck, rather broad, more or less depressed, with thin and flat lamella? and mostly nar- row nail, but modified in many ways to conform to the requirements of the different habits and the different food of the members. The sub-family is rather numerous in species, and somewhat polymorphic, for some of the forms show strong affinities towards the swans, others to the spur-winged geese, others again to the mergansers. It will here be necessary to go a little into details in describing the peculiar bulbous enlargement of the windpipe so characteristic of most ducks, since in most works of a general character this feature is usually dismissed by simple mention that such an enlargement occurs. In the females the windpipe descends regularly to the lower larynx, where it becomes more or less contracted. The rings coalesce into a small pyramid with bony walls, from which the two bronchi depart. In no species known has the female an enlargement like that of the male, with the exception of the Aus- tralian Virago castanea, the female of which has an arrangement similar to that of the male, but smaller, as shown by Prof. Newton. The peculiar structure of the male windpipe consists in a round, bony, bladdery appendage, situated on the left side, just above the bronchial tubes, forming the so-called labyrinth, or bulla ossea. This ap- pendage is only absent in a few sea-ducks. In the fresh-water ducks it is of a pretty uniform structure, as typified by the labyrinth of the mallard. Nevertheless every spe- cies presents minor differences which are constant and peculiar to it. The sheldrake (Tadorna) has a double labyrinth, with the enlargement on the right-hand side. In most of the sea-ducks, the labyrinth is of a somewhat different structure, it being not uniformly osseous all round, but more or less angular, pierced through by numer- ous openings, the so-called fenestrse, which are covered by membrane. This difference has been regarded as of systematic importance in separating river-ducks and sea-ducks ; but the fact that the presence or absence of a lobe to the hind toe is not co-extensive VOL. iv. 10 146 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. with a fenestrated or closed labyrinth renders the character useless as such. As ex- amples may be quoted the common eider, which has a labyrinth much like that of the mallard, while it is fenestrated in Sarkidiornis and Rhodonessa. Some species have, in addition to the labyrinth, or alone, a bulbous expansion higher up on the trachea, as in the rosy-billed duck ( Metopiana peposaca) from South America, without lobe to the hind-toe, and in the velvet-scotor ( Oidemia fusca), one of our common sea-ducks. We shall now briefly review the minor groups into which this sub-family is divis- ible, commencing with the tree-ducks, which seem to be somewhat isolated, and, perhaps, might have been made to form a separate sub-family in connection with the Muscovy duck and the genus Sarkidiornis. The tree-ducks (DendrocyyncC) are remarkable for their long thin neck, the long hind-toe, their arboreal habits, and their curious geographical distribution. The genus consists of about a dozen forms, which inhabit the tropical regions of the earth, chiefly America and the Malayan archipelago, but also India, Madagascar, Africa, and Australia. This general distribution is not so strange, since we have numerous parallels, as repeatedly observed on previous pages. But in this case we are confronted with the fact that one species, D. mduata, occurs both in Africa and in South America. Dr. Sclater, however, thinks it probable that it has been introduced to the latter country by negro slaves, but we are not aware that this is more than a mere guess. The Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), originally neotropical, but now domesticated nearly all over the earth, is too well known to detain us further, and the 'black-backed geese' (Sarkidiornis) need only be men- tioned for the curious, compressed, high wattle, that surmounts the culmen for nearly the whole of its length. The three species, one of which is found in South America, one in South Africa and Madagascar, and one in India, are exceedingly alike, and were once thought to be only one species, making one more instance of the kind of geographical distribution alluded to above. Not very distantly related to the foregoing genera are the true sheldrakes, Tadorna, of which the typical species (T. tadorna) is well worth mentioning. Considering its striking coloration, the head and neck being greenish black ; anterior part of back, sides, and breast rusty brown, shoulders and middle of under parts black ; wing- speculum green, rusty brown behind ; bill and frontal knob bright carmine, legs flesh- color, it will be perceived that it is one of the most striking-looking ducks. The size is that of a mallard, but it stands higher on the legs, and looks much statelier and walks better, on account of the more central position of the feet. The sheldrake inhabits the coast of temperate Europe, and is also found in corresponding latitudes on the eastern shores of the Palrearctic continent. It is sedentary, and, in spite of its unlobed hind toe, is strictly confined to salt water. The plumage is only molted once a year; there are no seasonal changes, and both sexes are nearly alike in coloration. Its breeding history is most interesting, for it nests in burrows made in the sand-dunes of the coast, either made by themselves or other buiTOwing animals, as rabbits or foxes. The inhabitants on several of the small sandy islands off the western coast of Jutland - notably the island of Sylt have made the whole colony of sheldrakes breeding there a source of considerable income, by judiciously taxing the birds for eggs and down, supplying them, in return, with burrows of easy access, and protecting them against all kinds of injury. The construction of such a duck-burrow is described by Johann Friedrich Xaumann, who says that all the digging, with the exception of the entrance- tunnel, is made from above. On top of a small, rounded hill covered with grass, the breeding chambers are first dug out to a uniform depth of two to three feet. These DUCKS. 147 are then connected by horizontal tunnels, and finally with the common entrance. Each breeding chamber is closed above with a tightly-fitting piece of sod, which can be lifted up like a lid, when the nest is to be examined and plundered. Such a complex burrow may contain from ten to twenty nest-chambers, but in the latter case there are usually two entrances. The birds, which, on account of the protection extended to them through ages, are quite tame, take very eagerly to the burrows. As soon as the female has laid six eggs the egging commences, and every one above that number is taken away, a single bird often laying twenty or thirty eggs in a season. The birds are so tame, that, when the lid is opened, the female still sits on the nest, not walkino- off into the next room until touched by the egg-gatherer's hand. When no more fresh eggs are found in the nest, the down composing the latter is also collected, being in quality nearly equal to eider down. FIG. 70. Tadorna tadorna, sheldrake. The coscoroba duck (Coscoroba coscoroba), is a South American form which, on account of its large size, graceful neck, and w T hite color is usually referred to the swans. It is a true duck, however, as proven both by external and internal characters. The true and typical ducks (Anatinse), the central and most numerous group of the family, are conventionally divided into two smaller divisions, according to the presence or absence of a membranaceous lobe to the hind toe, but while there gener- ally is an easily appreciable difference between a river-duck and a sea-duck, several forms are so completely intermediate that it is nearly impossible to decide to which category they should be referred. As far as we know, there is no character, external or internal, that will naturally divide the sub-family in two. As to the value of the formation of the trachea and its labryinth, we have already spoken above. The sub- family is a tolerably homogeneous one, and only few outlying forms belong to it. 148 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. Some species have one or the other organ extremely developed or abnormally devel- oped, as the common shovelers (Spatula) and the lobe-billed shovelers (Malacorhyn- c/ms), which have the bill extremely expanded towards the extremity, and the lamella? very long and thin, like a horny fringe around the tomia; the latter, an Australian species of peculiar coloration, light brownish gray with dark lunules, giving the plu- mage a scaly appearance, and a small, glossy, pinkish spot behind the eye, has besides, a soft membranaceous flap attached to each side of the anterior part of the bill. The male mallard (Anas boschas) has some of the upper tail-coverts recurved in a peculiar manner ; the mandarin-duck (Dendronessa galericulata),from Eastern Asia, has a ruff on the side of the neck, and the inner tertial modified into an erect fan or sail-like ornament ; the pin-tail (Dafila acutd) and the 'old squaw' (Clangula hyemalis) have FIG. 71. Spatula clypeator, shoveler-duck. the middle tail-feathers extremely lengthened and pointed ; the scoters and surf-ducks ( Oidemid) have a variously formed knob or tumor at base of the bill ; many forms have shoulder-feathers and tertials greatly lengthened and pendant, etc. ; but all are closely connected otherwise. The geographical distribution offers no peculiarities of a general nature, except that the sea-ducks are more numerous in the boreal regions than elsewhere. Some of the most tastefully and delicately colored birds are found among the ducks, and some of the rarest colors in the class are here met with. We have already mentioned the pink spot behind the eye of the lobe-billed shoveler. An Indian species, Wiodonessa caryophyllacea, remarkable as a fresh-water-duck with the wind- pipe of a sea-duck, is still more extraordinarily colored, both sexes having the head and the back of the neck of a beautiful, pale, rosy pink, with a small tuft of still DUCKS. 149 brighter rosy on the top of the head in the breeding-season. Mr. F. B. Simson, in 'The Ibis' for 1884, gives some interesting notes about this lovely duck, and tells how, during a shooting-party at Purneah, he secured a couple of specimens for Dr. Jerdon as follows: "Whilst going on I marked a small party of pink-headed ducks into one of the pools, and immediately told Jerdon that if he would leave the party and come with me I thought I could get a nice shot at his long-coveted birds. So we took four elephants and started. Of course with noisy, splashing animals any approach to ducks was impossible; on the other hand, the pool was full of huge crocodiles. We could see them with owl' glasses. However, I agreed to go on foot, the elephants to come to me the moment the shots were fired. I passed through the tall bamboo-grass in water deepening till it was nearly up to my waist as I came to the edge, and found myself about twenty yards from ten or a dozen of the ducks. They were not sitting close together, so I shot the finest with one barrel, and another as they rose, and I made off to the elephants as hard as I could. Once safe on Behemoth, I surveyed Avith Jerdon the sight, familiar to every Indian ornithologist, but always enjoyable and never to be forgotten, of the wonderful variety of bird-life to be seen in a spot like this. After having discussed all the species we saw, we examined the two pink-headed ducks we had picked up with the aid of the elephants. Jerdon was delighted with them, and said that the pink of the head was far more beautiful than in dried specimens." Mr. Simson states that this species is far from uncommon in a restricted area of Bengal, its home being the southern part of the district of Purneah, and in the country bordering the left bank of the Ganges, between the Coosy River, which separates Purneah from Bhangalpore, and in the Maldah district. For various reasons it is little known, however, to the Bengal sportsman and ornithologist, and is considered rare, the chief reasons being that it is poor on the table, and that it is never very numerous, nor goes in flocks, nor associates with other ducks. It is resident all the year round, pairing and nesting in short grass on dry land at some distance from the pools. At the southern extremity of South America lives a singular sea-duck, with lobed hind toe, which, on the other hand, seems to have the trachea of a fresh-water duck. The early travelers, on account of its curious habits, bestowed upon it the cognomen of the 'race-horse duck,' but those of the present century prefer to call it the ' steamer duck ' or ' side-wheel duck,' " on account of its movements when swimming presenting a strong resemblance to those of a paddle-wheel steamer." Others call it the ' logger-head duck,' and its systematic name is Tachyeres cinereus. At one time it was thought that there were two species, one incapable of flight, the other possessed of volant powers, but Mr. R. O. Cunningham seems to have established the fact that the < flying logger-head ' is only the young bird, and that the power of flight departs from it as it grows old, or, to use Cunningham's own words, "that, as the bird increases in size and weight, owing to the deposition of an increased amount of mineral matter in the bones and various other causes, it gradually abandons the habit of flight, finding that the speed Avith which it can progress through the water by means of the rapid movements of its wings, together Avith its diving-powers, are sufficient to preserve it from threatened danger." The eiders form a particularly striking group among the sea-ducks, also peculiar in some structural characters, having an unfenestrated labyrinth like the foregoing species. Also, in the great difference in the coloration of the sexes, and in the males assuming the plumage of the female for a short season following the breeding, they 150 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. approach the river-ducks. They inhabit the boreal regions, and in countries where they are numerous and protected, they are of considerable economical importance, the down of which they build the nest being highly valued. Each nest yields about an ounce and a third. From Greenland and Iceland alone six thousand pounds, or the contents of seventy-two thousand nests, are yearly exported. This gives an idea of FIG. 72. Somateria mollissima, eider-duck. the number of these'birds in the high north. All along the coast of Norway, where the bird is protected by law throughout the year, the common eider (Somateria mollis- sima~), is now exceedingly common and very tame. The inhabitants take great care of the breeding birds, which often enter their houses to find suitable nesting-places, and cases are authenticated in which the poor fisherman vacated his bed in order not to disturb the female eider, which had selected it as a quiet corner wherein to raise DUCKS. her young. In another instance the cooking of n family had to be done in a tem- porary kitchen, as a fanciful bird had taken up her abode on the fireplace. Nearly related to the eiders is one of our North American sea-ducks, the history of which is extremely interesting. We refer to the Labrador duck ( Camptolaimus labradorius), which, to all appearance, is now extinct, or at least very nearly so, since no capture of a specimen has been reported since December, 1878, while during the preceding ten years scarcely more than half a dozen birds were obtained. Altogether only three dozen specimens are preserved in collections, of which eleven are in Europe, the remainder in North America. The Labrador duck, consequently, is twice as rare in museums as the great-auk. As it was a good flyer, the circumstances which led to its destruction must have been quite different from those extinguishing the auk. Within historical times its distribution seems to have been very limited (the north- eastern Atlantic coast, presumably breeding in Labrador and migrating southwards in winter as far as the Chesapeake), but it has always been comparatively rare, even at the time of Wilson. It is difficult to say what ultimately brought on their extermina- tion, and the suggestion of an epizooty may be as good as any, but I would submit another possibility. It seems to be a fact that when a migratory species has reached a certain low number of individuals, the rapidity with which it goes towards extinction is considerably increased. Two circumstances may tend towards this result. We know that when birds on their migrations get astray, having lost their route and com- rades, they are nearly always doomed to destruction, that fate not only overtaking single individuals, but also large flocks to the last member. If the safety of the wan- derers, therefore, greatly depends upon their keeping their correct route, then safety decreases disproportionately the scarcer the species becomes, since, if the route is poorly frequented, the younger and inexperienced travelers have less chance of fol- lowing the right track, and more chance of getting lost, and consequently destroyed. The fewer the individuals, the more disconnected become the breeding localities, the more difficult for the birds to find each other and form flocks in the fall. Finally, the number will be reduced to a few colonies, and the species, consequently, in danger of extinction, since a casualty Avhich under ordinary circumstances only would affect a fraction of the members, now may easily prove fatal to all the remainders of the species. We need only suppose that during one unfortunate year nearly all the broods were destroyed by inundations, fires, or frost, to perceive what difficulty the few birds left in the autumn would have in winding their way without getting astray. We know that the proportion of birds returning in spring is comparatively small, and the flocks are considerably thinned down. Under the circumstances presumed, there will hardly be birds left to form flocks. But birds used to migrate in flocks do not like to or cannot travel alone ; hence they are forced to follow flocks of allied species, which may take them to localities far from their home. In that way a few scattered pairs may survive, and breed here and there, a number of years after the rest are destroyed, and such survivors are probably those few Labrador ducks which have been captured occasionally during the last twenty years or more. There is ;i possibility that a few such pairs may still be in existence, but, however hardy, their fate is sealed, and perhaps not a single one will get into the hands of a naturalist. Well may the Erismaturina3 be called quasi-cosmopolitan. The group, which is related to the sea-ducks, in reality belongs to the same category as Jtostratnla, Sarki- diornis, etc., having one or a few ' aberrant ' representatives in South America, Austra- lia, and South Africa, in this case somewhat modified, as no species is found in India, 152 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. while one invades the Paltearctic region, and one, our ruddy duck (Erismatura ru- bidd), is peculiar to North America. The birds of this family are especially charac- terized by the narrow and rigid tail-feathers, which are only scantily protected with coverts at the base. The strangest bird of the group is the Australian musk-duck (Blziura lobata}, the male of which has a large, compressed wattle underneath the chin, very much like that which Sarkidiornis has on the top of the bill. It very seldom takes to the wing, even when hard pressed, but it dives with great ease and can remain Tinder water for an incredible space of time. Its chief mode of progres- sion is by swimming with the head and part of the neck alone above the surface. The male is nearly twice as big as the female, and the color of both sexes is a blackish brown. During the pairing and breeding season the male emits a strong odor of ^w, FIG. 73. Merganser merganser, European goosander. musk, Avhicli may be smelt long before the bird is seen, and hence the name. The eggs, which usually are only two in number, are comparatively large, and of a pale olive color; the shell is rough and very strong. The peculiar voice of the musk-duck is said to resemble "the sound caused by a large drop of Avater falling into a deep well." The last sub-family consists of the mergansers, which are directly and closely related to several of our sea-ducks, but adapted to a diet of living fish instead of the molluscs which serve the sea-ducks for food. In consequence the bill has been greatly modified. The great width, being unnecessary, has been reduced, the lamellae, no longer serving as a sieve, have been changed into strong teeth which will prevent the escape of the unfortunate victims, and the nail has assumed the character of a strong hook. The result is that these birds are among the greatest destroyers of fish life. FLAMINGOS. 153 The true mergansers perhaps not more than seven species are all adorned with a more or less conspicuous crest on the head, our North American hoodnl- merganser (Lophodytes cucuttatus ) being in that respect the most noteworthy, as it is also altogether the prettiest species of the group. A small genus of South American ducks are doubtfully referred to this sub-family, and may probably constitute a separate group, viz., the so-called 'torrent-ducks' (^[er- ganetta). The bill is more like that of the ordinary ducks, but their plumage recalls that of the mergansers, while a sharp and large spur at the bend of the wing is en- tirely peculiar. They inhabit only the highest Andes from Columbia to Chili, and the rapidity with which they swim and dive against the mountain-torrents is described as truly astonishing. Among all the curious modifications of the typical bird-beak, none is more strange and aberrant than that of the flamingos (PHCENICOPTERGIDE^). The lower mandible forms a deep and broad box, into which the upper one, which is much lower and narrower, fits like a lid ; the sides are provided with quite duck-like lamellae ; and, to complete the oddness of the structure, both mandibles at the middle are bent abruptly downwards. This makes the flamingo a ' sifter,' indeed, and the bill is used to great advantage in sifting out the various minute crustaceans, molluscs, and vegeta- ble matter which they gather from the soft mud of the salt-water lagoons frequented by them. In feeding, the head is bent forwards until the anterior deflected part of the bill is parallel with the ground. The gullet is remarkably narrow, and allows only the minutest particles to pass into the stomach. In this particular, and also in the lamellae and the narrowness of the upper mandible, the flamingos present a most striking and interesting analogy to the baloenid whales, the 'whale-bone' of which has the same function as the lamellae of the Anatidas and the flamingos. On account of the extreme elongation of the neck (which, by the way, is not caused by a particularly great number of vertebrae, there being only eighteen, but by a prolongation of the individual vertebras, especially in the middle portion), and also on account of the equally lengthened legs, the flamingos were associated with the waders by the early authors. Some recent ornithologists who still adhere to this view have strengthened it by adducing several anatomical features in support of the affinity to the Herodii, especially to the ibises. According to them the characters of the breast-bone, and still more the pelvis, the number of ribs, the pterylography, and the visceral arrangement point dii-ectly toward the latter order. Huxley, on the other hand, thinks that the flamingo is " so completely intermediate between the Anserine birds on the one side, and the storks and herons on the other, that it can be ranged with neither of these groups, but must stand as the type of a division by itself." This position, however, seems to us indefensible, since the flamingos show no such peculiar characters that warrant their independent position. Combining characters of both, it must belong to one or the other of the two groups, and it does not seem to us that the characters are so nicely balanced as to leave us in doubt in regard to the place of the flamingos, following, as Ave do, those authors who associate them with the Anseres. It will suffice to mention the following characters : The lacrhymo-nasal region is elongate'd ; the frontalia are narrow, not covering the orl its above: grooves for the orbital glands are present ; so are also basi-pterygoid processes, th< ugh rudimentary; all characters which are duck-like and not at all herodinine, and the furculum and the shoulder-blades are distinctly anserine too. The muscular formula, BXY, points neither way, nor does the pterylosis strike us as so extremely distinct from that of the Anseres. The partly 154 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. li stork-like arrangement of the viscera, on the other hand, is completely counterbalanced by the strongly and unmistakably anserine nature of the tongue, and by the presence of well-developed coeca. We do not lay much stress upon the external characters, though the lamella? of the beak, the palmation of the toes, and the number of tail- feathers there being fourteen in the flamingo, but only twelve or ten in all Herodiones point in the same direction. A peculiar character is the number of primaries, the flamingo having eleven, or one more than most birds. The arrangement of the carotids is also worth mentioning. It is usually asserted that Phoenicopterus has only one carotid, the right a very unusual arrangement, since nearly all birds which possess only one have retained the left one. Professor Garrod, however, has shown that this is a mis- take, and that the flamingo has two carotids, though the left one is very small, and unites with the right one at the point where, in allied birds, the two arteries meet in order to follow alongside of each other, a unique modification, as illustrated by the accom- panying diagram. The characters which seem to connect the flamingo with the ibises and storks we regard partly as ancestral, and partly as the result of adaptation to a similar mode of life. On the other hand, placing them, as we do, next to the latter group, we, of course, do not deny their mutual relationship. The group is now a very small one, only about eight species being recognized at present. Otherwise during earlier geological periods, as there are more fossil Pho3nicopteroid Fir,. 74. Carotids in phcenicop- birds known from the deposits in France alone than are now distributed all over the tropical and sub-tropical world. The t ) r P e ^ s therefore a rather antique one, and at one time num- erous species and genera inhabited the shore of the lakes and estuaries under latitudes considerably north of the pres- ent limit of the family. In the eocene beds of France have been found remains of ap- parently flamingo-like birds, upon which have been based the genera Agnopterus and Elornis. From the miocene deposits there are described a Phcenicopterus croizeti, and not less than five species of the genus Pal&olodus. As will be seen from the accompanying sketch of the restored skeleton of one of these, they were essentially like the flamingos of the pi-esent day in regard to the length of the legs and neck, but the bill was straight and altogether more normal than in the latter, the undeveloped young of which likewise has a straight bill. They very properly constitute the family PAL^EOLODONTID^E. The recent PHCENICOPTERID^E embrace only two genera, PJuxnicoparra and Phoe- nicopterus. The former, which is characterized by its thick, short, and otherwise aberrant beak and the absence of a hind toe, is peculiar to the Andes of Chili and Peru, and consists only of one imperfectly known species, P. andimis. Of the true flamingos the species belonging to the fauna of the United States, P. ruber, has been known under this name since the time of Linnaeus, but he and his successors dui'ing the last century believed it to be conspecific with the Mediterranean species. Bonnaterre, in 1790, and Temminck thirty years later, expressed a belief of their being separable ; but Brehm in 1823 seems to have been the first author to take their distinctness for granted, adopting without hesitation the name P. antiquorum, which Temminck had only proposed hypothetically. rotiil ; ri, right innominate rs, right subclavian. FLAMINGOS. 155 The flamingos are often kept in captivity, and their manners and habits, so far as they could be observed in a zoological garden, are well known. In the wild state, however, they are extremely shy birds, and of their breeding history nearly nothing was known, the old fable of their riding astride on top of high pyramids being copied from age to age in words and pictures, notwithstanding that Naumann, as early as 1838, demonstrated the anatomical and physiological impossibility of the alleged position of the breeding bird, and in spite of Dr. Cresson's assertions to the contrary. The story originated with the famous trav- eler Dampier, but from his narrative it is clear that he was only speaking upon hear- say evidence ; for when, in 1683, he visited the Cape Verde Islands, he found only nests and young ones, but no eggs ; and the ac- count of the breeding is therefore evidently based upon the tales of the natives. It runs as follows : - " When incubating they stand with their legs in the water, resting themselves against O ' O ~ the Hillock, and covering the hollow Nest upon it with their Rumps ; for their Legs are very long ; and building thus as they do upon the Ground they could neither draw their Legs conveniently into their Nests, nor sit down upon them otherwise than by resting their whole Bodies there, to the Prejudice of their Eggs or their Young, were it not for this admirable Contrivance which they have by natural Instinct." His statement has, however, been generally, if not universally, accepted, for want of a better, inasmuch as no competent observer had succeeded until 1881 in watching the manner in which the flamingo performed the task of incubation. Eggs have, indeed, been obtained by the bushel, but the \variness of the birds precluded any trust- worthy account until the visit of H. H. Jonston, in 1881, to a small colony in the Lake of Tunis, and of Mr. Abel Chapman, in 1883, to a large one near the mouth of the river Guadalquivir in Spain. The former says : " I took up my opera-glass and saw on two mounds, some foot and a half high, two flamingos sitting with their legs under them. Of this I am certain : I could see the tarsi protruding beyond the loose plumes of the wings." The latter gentleman's account is fuller, so we give the following extract from his narrative : "The islands were about six miles distant from the low shores of the 'marisma,' and at that distance no land whatever was in sight. The only relief from the monot- ony of endless wastes of water were the birds ; a shrieking, clamoring crowd hung overhead, while only a few yards off the surface was dotted with troops of stilts, sedately stalking about, knee-deep. Beyond these the strange forms of hundreds of flamingos met one's eye in every direction, some in groups or in dense masses; others, with rigidly outstretched neck and legs, flying in short strings or larger flights, FIG. 75. Restoration of the skeleton of Pakeolodus ambiguum. 156 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 'glinting ' in the sunlight like a pink cloud. Many pairs of old red birds were observed to be accompanied by a single white (immature) one. On examining narrowly the different herds, there was an obvious dissimilarity in the appearance of certain groups: one or two in particular seemed so much denser than the others ; the narrow white line appeared at least three times as thick, and in the centre it looked as if the birds were literally piled upon each other. Felipe suggested that these birds must be at their 'paj are ra,' or breeding-place; and after a long ride through rather deep water we found that this was so. On our approach, the cause of the peculiar appearance of the herd from a distance became clearly discerni- ble. Many of the birds were sitting down on a low mud island; some were standing on it, and j * others, again, were in the water. Thus the differ- ent elevations of their bodies formed what had appeared a triple or quad- ruple line. On reaching the spot we found a per- fect mass of nests ; the low mud plateau was crowded with them as thickly as the space per- mitted. These nests had little or no height: some were raised two or three inches, a few might be five or six inches; but the majority were mere- ly circular bulwarks of mud, with the impression of the birds' legs dis- tinctly marked on it. The general aspect of the FIG. 76. Pluenicopterus anticpwrum, flamingo. plateau was not unlike a large table covered with plates. In the centre was a deep hole full of muddy water, which, from the gouged appearance of its sides, appeared to be used as a reservoir for nest-making materials. Scattered all round this main colony were numerous single nests rising out of the water, and evidently built up from the bottom. Here and there two or three or more of these were joined together, ' semi-detached,' so to speak ; these separate nests rose some six or eight inches above the water-level, and were about fifteen inches across. The water was about twelve or fifteen inches deep. None of these nests as yet contained eggs, and though I returned to the ' pajarera' on the latest day I was in the neighborhood (May 11), they still remained empty. On both occasions many hundreds of flamingos were sitting on their nests, and on the llth we had a good view of them at close quarters. Linked arm and arm with Felipe, and crouching low on the water, to look as little human as possible, we approached within HERONS. 157 some seventy yards before their sentries showed signs of alarm, and at that distance with the glass observed the sitting birds as distinctly as one need wish. Their long red legs doubled under their bodies, the knees [heels!] projecting as far as or beyond the tail, and their graceful necks neatly curled away among their back-feathers, like a sitting swan, with their heads resting on their breasts, all these points were unmis- takable. Indeed it is hardly necessary to point out that in the great majority of cases (the nests being hardly raised above the level of the flat mud), no other position was possible. Still none of the crowded nests contained a single egg! How strange it is that the flamingo, a bird which never seems happy unless up to its knees in water, should so long delay the period of incubation ! for, before eggs could be hatched in the nests, and young reared, the water would have entirely disappeared, and the flamingos would be left stranded in the midst of a scorching plain of sun-baked mud. Being unable to return to the marisma, I sent Felipe back there on 26th May, when he found eggs." So much for the breeding habits, of which the accompanying cut gives a most excellent illustration. To complete the picture of these interesting birds we add the following, also from Mr. Chapman's pen : "In herds of three hundred to five hundred, several of which are often in sight at once, they stand feeding in the open water, all their heads under, greedily tearing up the grasses and water-plants from the bottom. On approaching them, which can only be done by extreme caution, their silence is first broken by the sentries, who com- mence walking away with low croaks ; then the hundreds of necks rise at once to the full extent, every bird gaggling its loudest, as they walk obliquely away, looking back over their shoulders as though to take stock of the extent of the danger. Pushing a few yards forward, up they all rise, and a more beautiful sight cannot be imagined than the simultaneous spreading of their crimson wings, flashing against the sky like a gleam of rosy light. In many respects these birds bear a strong resemblance to geese. Like them, flamingos feed by day ; and great quantities of grass, etc., are always floating about the muddy water where a herd has been feeding. Their cry is almost undistinguishable from the gaggling of geese, and they fly in the same catena- rian formations." ORDER IX. HERODII. The limitation of the present order, as it is adopted here, dates back only to 1867, when Huxley founded the 'family' Pelargomorphre for all the desmognathous 'waders' except the flamingos. His action was then cordially welcomed as a relief from the different attempts of separating the larger and hard-billed waders and the Scolopacoid birds, attempts which had failed, since the separation Avas based upon the length and position of the hind toe, or the condition of the feathering of the face, or the situation of the nostrils, or the nature of the bill, or the condition of the young when leaving the egg, or some other trifling character. Broadly speaking, the group pro- posed by Huxley consists of three types, ibises, storks, and herons, which, in addi- tion to the desmognathous character of the palate, agree in having no trace of basi- pterygoid processes, therein differing from the members of the foregoing order, and in having long ' wading ' legs with no full webs between the toes, therein different both from the foregoing order and from that following, the Steganopodes. At first the group was generally regarded as a very natural and rather homogeneous one. The only dis- 158 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. sent came from those authors who expected to add to the naturalness and homoge- neity by including the flamingos, though Professor Parker, it must be admitted, all the time tried to show that the distance of the Pelargomorpha? from some of the schizo- gnathous waders was not so great as most authors were ready to concede since Hux- ley's scheme of classification had commenced to overthrow the old notions. As to the mutual relationship of the forms included, the views were a little divided, some authors holding that the ibises and storks were more closely allied than the storks and herons, others defending the opposite opinion. The latter are now generally conceded to be right, but so far have some modern anatomical systematists gone as to assert that the ibises are so different from the storks and herons, and so much like the schizo- gnathous waders, that they are better classified with the latter than with the former, Forbes being foremost among the authors recommending this course. Forcible argu- ments are produced on both sides, but a final decision is extremely difficult, since it seems to depend upon the question whether the desmognathism is so important a character that it counterbalances the many characters in which herons and storks dis- agree with the ibises, and which the latter have in common with the Gralke. For obvious reasons Ave shall not try to solve the question here, but will retain the ibises in this order, though regarding them as a group of equal taxonomic value to the storks and herons combined. We therefore propose to treat them as a super-family under the name of IBIDOI- DE^E, and shall at once proceed to point out the chief characters by which they differ from the Ardeoideffi. The former, which embrace ibises and spoonbills, are schizo- rhinal ; the posterior angle of their mandible is recurved ; occipital foramina are pres- ent ; the edge of the cranium above the orbits is truncate, indicating the position of the nasal glands; the breast-bone is four-notched behind, like that of the curlews; the accessory femoro-caudal is present. They also differ from the storks and herons in the form of the furculum and its relation to the breast-bone, the number of ribs, and several other characters of more or less importance. Externally the two super- families are easily distinguished by the bill, the Ibidoideffi having it weak and fur- rowed by a long groove for nearly its whole length. As indicated above, the present super-family embraces the ibises and the spoon- bills, but while the members of these two groups look extremely dissimilar on account of the apparently enormous difference in the shape of their bills, they are otherwise so closely allied as to be hardly allowed more than sub-family rank; hence we recog- nize only one family, the IBIDID^E. The bill of the ibises is more or less cylindrical, and evenly arched from the base, much after the fashion of a curlew's bill. The spoonbills have the beak greatly flattened and broadened, anteriorly widened into a spoon-like or spade-like expansion. The Ibididas inhabit the warmer portions of the globe, but are not very numerous, some thirty living species being known. Several fossil forms have been described, however; for instance, Ibis pai/ana and Ibidopodia palustris, from the miocene deposits of France, which are said to show even greater affinities to the curlews than the recent species. First in the line comes, of course, Ibis ajthiopica, the sacred ibis of the ancient Egyptians (and of the British Ornithologists' Union). In explanation of the accom- panying cut, it may be stated that the head and neck are entirely naked, and the skin black ; the feathers of the body are white ; the lengthened and disconnected barbs of the tertiaries are beautifully blackish purple. According to the Rev. E. C. Taylor, the buff -backed heron " does duty on the IBISES. 159 Nile as the ibis, being generally pointed out to travelers by dragomans, etc., as the real Ibis religiosa" This is due to the fact that the " sacred ibis," to quote Mr. D. G. Elliot's words, " is no longer met with upon the Nile north of Khartum, and I do not know of any authentic account of its having been seen in Egypt in modern times;" and Dr. A. L. Adams finds " no reason for considering the sacred ibis to have been a native at any time of either Egypt or Nubia." A few straggling individuals to lower Egypt have, however, been recently reported. The latter author continues as follows : " No doubt it was imported by the ancient Egyptians ; and judging from the numbers which are constantly turning up in the tombs and pits of Sakkara and -< FIG. 77. Ibis cethiopica, sacred ibis. elsewhere in Egypt, and the accounts of Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, etc., the ibis must have been very numerous, and, like the brahmin bull in India, 'did as it choosed.' The last-named writer says, ' every street in Alexandria is full of them. In certain respects they are useful, in others troublesome. They are useful because they pick up all sorts of small animals, and the offal thrown out of the butchers' and cooks 1 shops. They are troublesome because they devour everything, are dirty, and with difficulty prevented from polluting in every way what is clean, and what is not given to them.' The late Mr. Rhind informed me that he found several jars of white eggs, as large as a mallard's, along with many embalmed bodies of ibises, at Thebes. Mummied ibises are usually found alone, but sometimes with the sacred animals; and 160 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. although Hermopolis was the patron city of the bird, as Buto of the kestrel and other hawks, we find it also among the tombs of Thebes and Memphis. No doubt the white ibis was imported into Italy and kept about the temples of Isis. It was the emblem of Tliotli, the scribe or secretary of Osiris, whose duty it is to write down and recount the deeds of the deceased ; in consequence the bird is constantly seen on the ancient monuments under various forms." The sacred ibis inhabits tropical Africa down to the Transvaal ; a very near ally, I. bernieri, is peculiar to Madagascar, while another, also very closely related form, I. strictipennis, inhabits Australia and several of the Moluccan islands. In regard to the habits of this famous bird, the " well-known portrait of which greets us ever welcome every quarter," we make the following abstracts from the account of Dr. R. Vierthaler, who had rich opportunities for studying these birds in their native haunts. "In the beginning of September they build, in the neighbor- hood of Khartum, their nests on the mimosas which stand in the middle of the inun- dated marshes, twenty to thirty on a single tree. The nest is more or less skilfully made, of the size of that of the rook, and woven together of coarse twigs, with an inner layer of fine grass and a few feathers. The eggs, which are of a greenish white, are generally three rarely four in number, and the size that of the mallard. It only breeds once a year, but does not confine itself strictly to one quite fixed time, as I found young ones in November of the same size as those taken in the latter part of September, and it is not probable that this was caused by any disturbance during the breeding, since the nests are nearly inaccessible, small boats being entirely wanting. In freedom the ibis shows a considerable cunning, and is so shy that the hunter can- not creep up to it, and almost always follows it in vain. It does not show any fear at all for the natives, and I saw it often among the cattle, quite regardless of the shep- herd or any other black man who happened to be quite near. The flesh of the young as well as the old birds is savory and tender, and when well prepared it is a great dainty. The old Egyptians do not appear to have been acquainted with this fact, or they would not probably have embalmed them." The extent of the feathering on the head and neck is very variable in the ibises, and numerous generic appellations have been created in consequence. In other respects the group is rather homogeneous, and few striking abnormalities can be recorded. A curious modification of the feathers is found in the straw-throated ibis (Carphibis spinicollis} from Australia, which has the feathers of the front of the neck and breast changed into stiff and blunt spines, which in appearance and color are surprisingly like short bits of straw hanging down over the breast in front. Both males and females are said to possess this ornament, and, in fact, the sexes are similar in all these birds. We have already, in the introduction (p. 9), alluded to the fact that the two alleged species of the genus G-uara, the white and the scarlet ibises, are structurally identical, only differing in coloration as indicated by the names. The scarlet species is a native of northeastern South America, and has only been reported as seen, but not obtained, within our fauna. On account of the brilliancy and pureness of its red color, it is one of the most beautiful water-birds, and as it bears the captivity quite well, it is often kept in the zoological gardens. Here, however, the scarlet coloration soon gives way to a regular rosy tint. Only one species, namely the glossy ibis (Plegadis autumnalis), is distributed over all the warmer regions of the globe. Like its congeners it has nearly the whole head SPOON-BILLS. 161 feathered, except a stripe between the eye and the base of the bill. In that respect they represent the opposite extreme to the sacred ibis. The name of the spoonbills explains itself, and it is hardly necessary to refer to the accompanying illustration, for no one who ever saw any of these large and beauti- ful birds with the singular beak mistook it for anything else. The Old World species . *g^iMl x, 1 ^; * FIG. 78. Platalea leucorodia, spoon-bill. (Platalea) are all nearly pure white, while the American spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja) is light rose-colored, with brilliant carmine wing-coverts. In their general habits, as in their structure, the spoonbills are only modified ibises. Like these they also fly with outstretched necks, perch on trees, and also generally breed in trees. Messrs. Sclater and Forbes have demonstrated that, in certain localities at least, the spoonbill of Europe, P. leucorodia, breeds on the ground among the reed-beds. In 1877 they vis- VOL. IV. 11 162 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. ited a breeding colony near Amsterdam, in Holland, from the interesting account of which we select the following : " Having inspected the cormorants' breeding-place, we proceeded about fifty yards further through the reed-beds, over a still more treacherous swamp, to the breeding- place of the spoonbills. The nests of these birds were not situated so near together as those of the cormorants, but scattered about two or three yards from each other, with thin patches of reeds growing between them. There was, however, a clear open space in the neighborhood, formed of broken-down reeds, in which the birds were said to congregate. The spoonbill's nest, in the Horster Meer at least, is a mere flattened surface of broken reed, not elevated more than two or three inches above the feneral O level of the swamp ; and no other substance but reed appears to be used in its con- struction. What the proper complement of eggs would be if the birds were left undisturbed we cannot say, for, as in the case of the cormorants, the nests are robbed systematically twice a week, until the period when it is known by experience that they cannot produce anymore eggs. Then at last the birds are allowed to sit undisturbed. At the time of our visit the season for collecting esgs was just past ; but we helped ourselves to eight fresh eggs, from different nests, laid since the last collection had been made. During all the time that we were in the reed-beds, the cormorants and spoonbills were floating about over our heads, fully aware that there was an enemy in the camp." The characters of the super-family ARDEOIDE^E having already been stated to be the reverse of those given for the Ibidoideae, we may at once proceed to treat of the separate families. Through the wood-ibises, which, indeed, until very recently, in the systems were associated and more or less confounded with the true ibises, we are led into the CICONIID^E, th