120 Mr. A. Newton on the supposed Gular Pouch 



desirable that au examination of a really old cock-bird should be 

 made, and that at the season of the year when a structure of the 

 sort might be sujoposed to be most fully developed. As our 

 native race of Bustards has been extinct since 1838, or there- 

 abouts, it was not easy to obtain such a specimen as I wished*. 

 At length, through the kindness of a correspondent, Mr. Henry 

 Smurthwaite, on the 12th of March, 1858, I received a magnifi- 

 cent old male Otis tarda, which had been killed near Leipzig a 

 few days before, and had been forwarded to me with all possible 

 speed. It weighed 23i lbs., and arrived in beautiful condition. 

 With the greatest anxiety, I immediately looked under the tongue 

 — no hole was visible; I took a probe — no opening appeared. 

 Mistrusting my own powers of manipulation and dissection, T 

 hurried off with it to London and secured the assistance of Mr. A. 

 D. Bartlett, than whom there can scarcely be a more practical or 

 more careful observer. We again searched for the opening under 

 the tongue, and we came, I confess reluctantly, to the undoubted 

 conclusion that in this specimen it did not exist. Mr. Bartlett 

 then began to skin the neck — not in front, lest we should cut 

 into the pouch, but from the axilla along the side to the corner 

 of the mouth, laying bare the skin on either side : nothing like 

 a pouch could be seen. Subsequently we separated the wind- 

 pipe and gullet, and cut them off from the head. Then with a 

 blowpipe it was easy to inflate the body by the oesophagus : by 

 the trachea we failed to do so, as the air escaped through a broken 

 wing-bone ; but by blowing down the former we could swell out 

 the whole body and neck wonderfully. After that, we cleared 

 the skin away from the entire neck, and presently from the body. 

 The neck was entirely clothed with cellular tissues in a most re- 

 markable manner; they were very delicate, and so close to the 

 skin that even when we grazed the roots of the feathers we oc- 



* Most, if not all, of the stray examples which have of late years occurred 

 in England appear to have been bu-dsof the preceding summer, and, with two 

 exceptions only, have been females. The very fine young male obtained 

 near Hungerford, January 3, 1856, was preserved at Mr. Leadbeater's esta- 

 bhshment (P. Z. S. 1856, ]). 1). Mr. J. Wolley, who was then in Loudon, 

 at my request, questioned the man who skinned it, but uo special search 

 for a gular pouch was made. The breast-bone of this bird, with some of 

 the membranes still adhering to the anterior part, is now lying before me. 



