77 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Once more in South America we meet with still another oddity 

 among birds the very prince of outliers I refer to the far- 

 famed seriema (DidiolopJius crisiatus) (see Fig. 5), a form that 

 has puzzled the best of taxonomers since the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, and even we moderns are as yet by no means 

 agreed upon its exact affinities. With the digestive apparatus of 

 a heron, with an external resemblance to the secretary bird (Fig. 

 6), with other points in its structure hinting at an alliance with 

 the bustards {Otis), or peradventure with some of the plovers, and 

 with habits distinctly its own, it is a fact hardly to be wondered at 

 that the classifiers of birds have at various times placed it with 



Fig. 5. The Seriema (Dichohphus cristatus). Copied by the nuUior from Newton's figure. 



great certainty in divers orders, families, or of other sections of the 

 class Aves. It is, however, safe to say that the seriema has de- 

 scended with but little modification from some very ancient type, 

 and one that thrived, perhaps, even before a number of our pres- 

 ent groups of birds came to be differentiated. 



There is a fine living specimen of this bird in the National 

 Zoological Gardens of Washington, where the writer has fre- 

 quently studied it. In body it is about the size of a small turkey, 

 but owing to its long legs and neck it has a height, when stand- 



more nearly related to the New Caledonian RIdnochctus than to the neotropical Eur^/pyga." 

 Remarkable indeed are some of the interrelationships of birds. 



