32 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



of the parent — certainly a curious circumstance — taken either to 

 supply partly digested vegetable food, or water, in a region where 

 succulent vegetation was scarce and moisture absent. 



On December 6 I noted "many martinetas, as these tinamou are 

 called, in traveling by train to Zapala in western Neuquen. Scat- 

 tered individuals were common, while it was not rare to see 30 or 

 40, or even 100, all adults, banded together. These frequently ex- 

 hibited little alarm, appearing graceful in their attitudes in con- 

 trast to their stiff, stilted motions when startled. At times one ran 

 out and bowed abruptly, throwing the head down almost between the 

 feet. Near Zapala on December 7 I found where some predatory 

 animal had eaten a martineta, but noted no further sign of them 

 there. 



Near Victorica, Pampa, these tinamou were fairly common and an 

 immature bird was taken. Males were heard whistling on December 

 29. On March 27, on the flats bordering the Eio Tunuyan, a short 

 distance south of Tunuyan, Mendoza, half a dozen were found in 

 company. On the low brush-covered sand hills east of the river, 

 the birds w^ere abundant and tracks were seen in the sand in many 

 places. An adult female secured on this day was about to lay, so 

 that the breeding season seems to vary considerably with the locality. 



The hugely developed caeca found in the intestine of this bird, 

 differing greatly from those in any other known species, have been 

 described and figured by Beddard.^^ They are thin-walled sacs 

 with the external surface divided into many lobular projections 

 well marked toward the base, and tending to disappear at the free 

 end. The size is immense in proportion to the bulk of the bird. In 

 one specimen that I examined they measured roughly 130 mm. long 

 by 25 mm. in diameter, in another 125 mm. long by 22 mm. wade. 

 The distal end becomes smooth and more attenuate than the base. 

 In discussing a specimen of Calopezus e. forinosus (female), col- 

 lected by R. Kemp, at Laguna Alsina, Bonifacio de Cordoba, C. 

 Chubb ^^ gives a figure, taken from a sketch by the collector on the 

 original label of the bird, where the caeca are shown as elongate 

 cylindrical organs, somewhat swollen at intervals. The figure, how- 

 ever, does not agree wath the field notes, given immediately above it, 

 as there Mr. Kemp states, " Caeca — 100 and 140 mm. Large, conical 

 and sacculated." It must be presumed that there has been some error 

 in attributing the sketch to the present bird as from the delineation, 

 no one would describe the caeca as large, conical, or sacculated. Per- 

 sonally I examined the caeca in about a dozen specimens of Calopezus 

 elegans, including birds of both sexes and in all found them of the 

 conical lobulated type figured and described by Beddard, though 



« Ibis, 1890, pp. 61-66. ^' Ibis, 1919, p. 14. 



