RING-TAILED HARRIER. 3G7 



Male. — The Common or Ring-tailed Harrier is of a slender 

 elongated form, although its body, when the feathers are re- 

 moved, is found to be short, as in the Owls. Like them also 

 it is very light, so that the bulk of the bird consists chiefly of 

 its plumage. The head is rather large ; the bill slender, 

 when compared with that of the falcouine species hitherto de- 

 scribed. 



The upper mandible is somewhat concave within, the lower 

 deeply so, and having a median prominent line. The tongue 

 is eight and a half twelfths long, fleshy, saggittate and papillate 

 at the base, concave above, horny beneath, and with the tip 

 rounded and slightly emarginate. The oesophagus, PL XXI, 

 Fig. 3, abcd^ is six and a half inches long, wide, dilated into 

 a crop, be, which when fully distended is three inclies in width ; 

 then contracted to ten-twelfths, and again at the proventriculus, 

 d k, dilated to an inch and a half. The glandules are very small, 

 and form a continuous belt nearly an inch in breadth. The 

 stomach, e, is roundish, somewhat compressed, an inch and 

 three-fourths in diameter ; its muscular coat extremely thin, 

 the inner soft, the tendinous spqces about a third of an inch in 

 breadth. The intestine, efhj, is thirty-four inclies long, from 

 three-twelfths to a twelfth and a half in width ; the rectum three 

 inches in length, with a large globular cloacal dilatation, an inch 

 in diameter. The coeca are extremely small, oblong, two-twelfths 

 in length, and one-twelfth in width. The pylorus has a thicken- 

 ed margin, without knobs, but with tv\^o small ridges. The two 

 lobes of the liver are nearly equal in size ; and there is an ob- 

 long gall-bladder, half an inch in length. 



The eyes are large, and the eyelids are feathered, and mar- 

 gined v^'ith ciliary bristles ; the supraocular ridge also feathered. 

 The nostrils large, ovato-oblong, with an internal oblique ridge 

 from the upper part. The aperture of the ear is elliptical, 

 very large, half an inch in length, and margined with slender 

 recurved feathers. From its inferior margin proceeds down- 

 wards and forwards to the base of the lower jaw a narrow space 

 of bare skin nearly three quarters of an inch long. The tarsi 

 are feathered anteriorly about a third of their length, rather long, 

 slender, with eighteen large anterior oblique scutella, of which 



