Zoological Society. 347 



are undoubtedly extreme ; yet we perceive in the cere which covers 

 the base of the bill in the entire Apteryx a structure which exists in 

 all the struthious birds ; and the anterior position of the nostrils in 

 the subattenuated beak of the Cassowary is an evident approach to 

 that very singular one which peculiarly characterizes the Apteryx. 

 With regard to the digestive organs, it is interesting to remark, that 

 the thickened muscular parietes of the stomach of the most strictly 

 granivorous of the struthious birds do not exhibit that apparatus of 

 distinct Musculi digastrici and later ales which forms the characteristic 

 structure of the gizzard of the gallinaceous order : the Apteryx, in 

 the form and structure of its stomach, adheres to the struthious type. 

 It differs again in a marked degree from the Gallina, in the absence of 

 a crop. With respect to the ccEcal appendages of the intestine, though 

 generally long in the Gallince, they are subject to great variety in 

 both the struthious and grallatorial orders : their extreme length and 

 complicated structure in the Ostrich and Rhea form a peculiarity only 

 met with in these birds. In the Cassowary, on the other hand, the 

 ccBca are described by the French academicians as entirely absent. 

 Cuvier* speaks of ' un caecum unique' in the Emeu. In my dissec- 

 tions of these struthious birds I have always found the two normal 

 cceca present, but small ; in the Emeu measuring about five inches 

 long and half an inch in diameter ; in the Cassowary measuring 

 about four inches in length. The presence of two moderately de- 

 veloped caeca in the Apteryx affords therefore no indication of its re- 

 cession from the struthious type : these cceca correspond in their 

 condition, as they do in the other struthious birds, with the nature 

 of the nutriment of the species. It is dependent on this circum- 

 stance also, that in the grallatorial bird (Ibis), which the Apteryx 

 most resembles in the structure of its beak, and consequently in the 

 nature of its food, the cceca have nearly the same relative size ; but 

 as regards the Grallce, taken as an order, no one condition of the 

 cceca can be predicated as characteristic of them. In most they are 

 very small ; in many single. 



■• What evidence, we next ask, does the generative system afford of 

 the affinities of the Apteryx ? A single, well-developed, inferiorly 

 grooved, subspirah. intromittent organ attests unequivocally its rela- 

 tions to the struthious group ; and this structure, with the modifi- 

 cations of the plumage, and the peculiarities of the skeleton, lead me 

 to the same conclusion at which I formerly arrived f, from a study 

 of the external organization of the Apteryx, viz. that it must rank as 



* Lecons d'Anat. Comp. 1836. iv. p. 291. 



t Art. Aves, Cycl. of Anat. and Phys., i. 1836, p. 269. 



