that connect the Orders and Families of Birds. 413 



knees : while their habits, entirely terrestrial, and for the most 

 part confined even to arid situations, keep them apart from 

 those birds which affect the neighbourhood of waters. They 

 are met, on the other hand, by a group among the Grallatores, 

 the family ofGriiida, which, though decidedly Waders, and living 

 in moist places, have their food more vegetable, and their habits 

 more terrestrial, than the other families of the same order*. 

 The Gruida also may be observed to retain that peculiar loose- 

 ness and delicate texture of plumage which are conspicuous in 

 the gallinaceous tribe, from which they immediately recede, and 

 of which the Struthio of Linnaeus may be considered the type. 

 In that singular genus by which we enter among the Waders, the 

 Psophia of Linnajus, this affinity is obviously discernible. In 

 form and plumage it at first sight appears an Ostrich in minia- 

 ture ; while it retains the brilliancy and changeableness of colour 

 natural to the gallinaceous tribes, but so distinct from the sober 

 hues of the Waders, that it alone of the order is found to possess 

 them. I feel some hesitation indeed in saying to which order it 

 actually belongs, until dissection determines the point. As yet 

 the accounts we have of its manners, although not sufficiently 

 satisfactory, would induce us to rank it with the Gruida, to 

 which its habit of standing in its sleep on one leg and drawing 

 in its head between its shoulders, seems particularly to assimi- 

 late it. It may here be added, that the family of Charadriadce, 

 which meets the Gruida at the other extremity of the order of 

 Grallatores, bears a considerable affinity to the Struthionida, or 

 cursorial subdivision of the gallinaceous birds, in the conforma- 

 tion of their feet. Both are distinguished from the remaining 

 families of their respective orders by the absence of the hinder 

 toe ; a character which may be observed to be carried to a still 



* " Leurs habitudes sont plus terrestres, et leur nourriture plus vegetale que celle des 

 genres suivans. Aussi ont elles un g6s)er musculeux etdes caecums assez longs." — Cu- 

 vier, Hegne jinim. torn. i. p. 471. 



3 H 2 greater 



