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 



