Mr. YARRELL on the Trachee of Birds. 381 
notice of this new and interesting species should have been fur- 
nished by a gentleman so eminently distinguished for his acquire- 
ments as a naturalist and a scholar. Possessing as this bird does in 
a great degree the external characters of the Demoiselle, it also 
bears some resemblance to it in its anatomical structure. The 
trachea, quitting the direction of the vertebra of the neck at the 
lower part, passes downward and backward between the branches 
of the furcula till it reaches the anterior edge of the keel ; it then 
turns upward into.a groove formed for its reception, and being 
suddenly reflected forward and downward, traverses the project- 
ing portion of the sternum, and passes backward to the lungs, as 
shown in the annexed representation. "The furcula, it will be 
observed, is similar to that of the Demoiselle. 
Dr. Latham's figure of the sternum and trachea of the Com- 
mon Crane (Ardea Grus) being referred to, and compared with 
the same parts in the Demoiselle and the Stanley Crane, it will 
be perceived, that the insertion of the windpipe in the latter bird 
is upward, that of the Demoiselle principally backward, while 
that of the Common Crane will be found to be a compound of 
both, combining the upward inclination of the one with the 
backward insertion of the other; and the depth of this insertion 
within the keel appears to depend on the age of the bird rather 
than the sex. In a very old female, of which I prepared the 
bones, the insertion is carried to the utmost extent that the size 
of the sternum will admit. In a second specimen of a younger 
male bird, the insertion was not so deep as in that last men- 
tioned, but still much more so than in the sternum represented 
by Dr. Latham: and in the valuable and extensive collection of 
Joshua Brookes, Esq., to which that gentleman very kindly 
allows me access, there is a skeleton of the Common Crane,— 
evidently a young bird by the state of the bones, —in which the 
insertion is not carried so far as in the representation alluded to ; 
but 
