64 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



SUPER-ORDER III. - - EUORNITHES. 



With the above name I have designated the rest of the existing birds. This super- 

 order, therefore, embraces all living birds except the Dromaeognathae and the penguins. 

 After these two groups are removed, there remains a vast number of very differently 

 organized forms which, however, by intermediate links and connections on all sides, 

 show greater relationships inter se than with any of those treated of on the foregoing 

 pages. 



The characters of this assemblage, as a whole, are rather of negative nature, though 

 this statement may be little more than a play of words, since the absence of a certain 

 feature is just as 'positive' a character in one group as is its presence in anothei'. The 

 phrase only means that, while we are familiar with the general characters of the bird- 

 class, and while, from the previous account, we have learned the chief characters of 

 the groups removed, we consequently now should know the peculiarities of the last 

 group without any further characterization. A brief summary may nevertheless be 

 useful. 



The Euornithes are not dromaeognathous, and, I need not say, their jaws are not 

 possessed of teeth ; the two mandibular halves are firmly united in a median sym- 

 physis ; the head of the quadrate bone has two facets ; the sutures of the skull disap- 

 pear entirely in the adult; the dorsal vertebras are saddle-shaped, and more or less 

 firmly united ; the sacral vertebras are anchylosed with the pelvic bones, of which the 

 ilia and ischia are anchylosed behind, thus forming an ilio-sciatic foramen ; the tail is 

 short, and the last vertebras fused into a pygostyle; the wings, when in rest, are folded 

 up, the bones lying more or less parallel to the main axis of the body ; the scapula 

 forms an angle Avith the coracoid, and not an arch ; the hand has a free pollex ; three 

 metatarsal elements are never separately distinguishable ; the feathers are distributed 

 over certain pterylas with interlying apteria. 



The exact relationship of the present superorder to the two foregoing ones is by no 

 means obvious, since it may well be disputed whether the so-called schizognathous 

 " Natatores," on the one hand, are nearer related to the penguins than are the gallina- 

 ceous birds to the ostriches, on the other. All the evidence tends to show, however, 

 that the three groups separated very early, but our present material is too defective to 

 allow any trustworthy speculations as to the probable process. Fossil Euornithes are 

 by no means rare, however ; but they are mostly from more recent strata, and nearly 

 all belong to still existing types, in some instances of more generalized features, but 

 the 'connecting links' are still missing. The search for fossil birds has, especially in 

 France, unearthed many interesting facts concerning the geological history of the 

 Euornithes and their former distribution, and the discovery, in deposits near Paris, of 

 several tropical and particularly African forms, for instance, Trogon and Leptosomus, 

 are extremely interesting as compared with the later arctic and sub-arctic faunas of 

 the same latitudes during the glacial periods. But though the Euornithic forms origi- 



O O 1 O O 



nated during an earlier geological epoch, the present day is emphatically the era of 

 the Euornithes. 



ORDER VI.--CECOMORPHJE. 



It is particularly among the ' swimmers ' and ' waders,' the Natatores and Gral- 

 latores of the old systems, that the modern investigations into the structure and the 

 affinities of birds have made a sad havoc, entirely revolutionizing our ideas as to the 



