S-k SHUFELDT — 03TE0L0GY OF THE CUCKOOS. [Jan. 4, 



Either articular cup is well concaved, with its inturned process 

 much produced and spine-like. Behind, the process is short and 

 stumpy. Comparatively speaking it is a stronger lower jaw than 

 has either Geococcyx or Coccyzus. 



Typically cuculine, the delicate hyoidean arches of Crotophaga 

 present us with little worthy of especial remark. They agree in the 

 main with what was shown to obtain in those parts in the " Road 

 Runner." We must note, however, that in the Ani the cerato- 

 hyals are but mere granules of bone that neither fuse with nor meet 

 each other, but simply rest against the anterior tip, on either hand, 

 of the first basibranchial. 



I have not examined the sclerotal plates of the eye, nor the 

 intrinsic bones of the ear. They were lost from my specimens. 



Beddard has said that 



"Crotophaga a?ii is well known to possess a bronchial syrinx, which may 

 be considered as more specialized than that of Geococcyx and Pyrrho- 

 centor, in that the membrana tympaniformis is limited to the posterior 

 bronchial rings, commencing with about the seventh, and does not ex- 

 tend up to the point of bifurcation of the bronchi ; in this respect the 

 syrinx of Crotophaga resembles that of Steatornis, which has been care- 

 fully described by Prof. Garrod." l 



As in that bird, the bronchi arise from the trachea much as they 

 do in the Mammalia ; the first nine rings of each bronchus are 

 entire ; the tenth and eleventh rings are considerably wider from 

 side to side, and their extremities are connected by membrane 

 which forms the inner neck of the bronchus ; the succeeding rings 

 become gradually narrower and are similarly completed internally 

 by membrane. In Steatornis the membrana tympaniformis is only 

 of limited extent, the posterior rings of the bronchi being, like the 

 anterior rings, complete ; in Crotophaga this is not the case — all the 

 bronchial rings, commencing with the seventh, are semirings ; there 

 is a single pair of slender intrinsic muscles attached, one on each 

 side of the tenth bronchial semiring. 2 



As in the case of Geococcyx, Crotophaga has eighteen free vertebrae 

 between the skull and the pelvis, and although these have the same 

 general characters as the corresponding segments in the spinal 

 column of the Ground Cuckoo, they have special features of their 

 own. For instance, the fifth to the eighth cervicals develop a 



1 Coll. Scientif. Papers, p. 188. 

 '/». Z. S., 1885, p. 173. 



