132 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



rails is the broad lobes of their toes, giving their feet a strong resemblance to the 

 corresponding organ of the grebes. In consequence they are good swimmers and pass 

 the greater part of their life on the water, breeding near lakes, pools, or quiet rivers, 

 and only during the migrations may they be found at salt water. The group is not 

 more numerous than that of the gallinules, and the different members deviate very 

 little from the tyjrical species, which are of a slaty black, usually with some white 

 marks in the region of the tail, the most remarkable species being, perhaps, the rare 

 South American Licornis with some curious caruncles on the forehead. Like the 

 other members of the family, coots once played a more important role than now. Also 

 among the coots we find species, probably deprived of the power of flight, which in- 

 habited the Mascarene Islands, and became extinct through the action of the early 

 colonists. Such a one was the large Fulica newtonii. 



OEDEE VIII. CHENOMORPH^E. 



IT has been necessary to adopt this outlandish name for the ducks and their allies 

 composing the present order, in place of the Avell-knoAvn Anseres or Lamellirostres, 

 since we make it to include two forms which fall outside of the group designated by 

 the two latter names. Following the view of Parker and Huxley in associating the 1 

 screamers with the ducks, the propriety of which shall be treated of further on, we 

 also adopt the name which Huxley invented. 



This order opens the series of desmognathous birds which are characterized by 

 having the palatal bones united across the middle line, either directly or by the inter- 

 mediation of ossifications in the nasal septum. " The desmognathous skull," to use 

 Huxley's own words, " appears under its simplest form in Palamedea \_Anhima] and 

 the Lamellirostres. In these birds each maxillo-palatine is a broad, flat, and thin bony 

 plate, which unites with its fellow in the middle line of the palate. The septum may 

 be more or less ossified. The basipterygoid processes are represented by oval facets, 

 sessile upon the rostrum, and placed so far forward that the surfaces which articulate 

 with them are situated close to the anterior extremities of the pterygoid bones." In 

 the flamingoes the basipterygoid processes are rudimentary, and the maxillo-palatines 

 are enlarged and spongy, filling the base of the beak. All the members of this order 

 have the angle of the mandible strongly produced and upcurved. 



The Chenomorpha3, as here defined, are divisible into three sections, suborders or 

 superfamilies, as we may choose to call them, each well defined and presenting 

 characters of its own. At the present time the gaps between them are rather consid- 

 erable, and their position relative to other orders is also one of isolation, but the dis- 

 covery that different though evidently nearly related forms of the Chenomorpha3 at 

 present most isolated have been numerous during earlier geological periods indicates 

 that the gaps may eventually be bridged. 



The most isolated, and, on the whole, most generalized group is that of the so- 

 called screamers, the superfamily of the ANHIMOIDE^E. The most different views 

 have been held as to their position in the system, though usually they were referred 

 to the neighborhood of the rails or the ' Alectorides.' Great was, therefore, the 

 amazement when Parker and Huxley first announced the view that the screamers come 

 nearer to the ducks, basing their opinion upon the anatomical structure. Garrod and 

 Forbes, however, not less prominent as ornithotomists, held that Anhima and Chauna 

 were jsufficiently remote from all other orders to form one by themselves alone. We 



