402 ASIO BRACHYOTUS. 



(lecurved, the tip acute and deflected ; the lower mandible with 

 its crura narrow and flexible, the angle wide and elongated, 

 the dorsal line short and convex, the edges inflected, the tip 

 obliquely truncate, with a slight sinus on each side. 



The mouth is very wide, measuring an inch and a twelfth 

 across ; the palate flat, with two longitudinal ridges, and the 

 sides sloping upwards ; the aperture of the posterior nares nar- 

 rowly elliptical, with an anterior fissure. The tongue is small, 

 narrow, seven-twelfths long, sagittate and papillate at the base, 

 bristly on the sides, its tip thin and slightly bifid. The oeso- 

 phagus is five inches in length, of the nearly uniform width of 

 four and a half twelfths when contracted, and of ten-twelfths 

 when inflated. The proventricular glandules, which are rather 

 large, form a belt about eight-twelfths in breadth. The sto- 

 mach is nearly globular, two inches and two-twelfths long, two 

 inches in breadth, and an inch and a quarter across ; its mus- 

 cular coat thin, being composed of a single series of rather coarse 

 fasciculi : its tendons about four-twelfths in diameter, the epi- 

 thelium soft, thin, and longitudinally rugous. The pylorus is 

 extremely narrow, and closed by a thin margin. The intestine 

 is twenty-two inches long, from five -twelfths in width to a 

 twelfth and a half; the rectum three inches long, for an inch 

 and a half of its length three-twelfths in diameter, then enlarged 

 into a globular cloaca, an inch in width. The coeca are three 

 inches and two-twelfths long, for two inches narrow, having a 

 breadth of only one-twelfth, then expanded into an oblong sac, 

 of which the greatest breadth is five-twelfths. 



The nostrils are large, oblong, oblique, in the fore part of the 

 cere. The eyes very large ; the eyelids with broad thin crenate 

 margins, and ciliary fringes of small distantly barbed feathers. 

 The tarsi are short and rather stout ; the toes also short, and 

 feathered ; the first shortest, the third longest, the second con- 

 siderably longer than the fourth ; two terminal scutella on the 

 hind toe, three on the rest. The claws are long, slightly arched, 

 tapering, extremely acute, compressed, the first and second nar- 

 row and rounded beneath ; that of the fourth toe smallest, of 

 the first a little larger, those of the other toes much larger and 

 nearly equal. 



