I02 CONIROSTRES—COOT 



years passed before examples became at all common in museums, 

 and Temminck writing in 1823 {Rec. d'Ois. \\vr. 23) was only able to 

 refer to a single one at Paris, beside the two originally received in 

 England. Seven years afterwaixls he figured a male which was 

 alive at Paris, and says there was another in Holland. But at or 

 about the same time the species was exhibited in London (Bennett, 

 Gard. and Menag. Zool. Soc. ii. p. 8), where it has even bred, though 

 the only young bird that, after an incubation lasting from 7th May 

 to 30th June 1846, or 54 days, was hatched lived but six weeks 

 (Broderip, Leaves from the Note-Book of a Naturalist, pp. 14-16). 

 The male Condor is remarkal^le among birds 

 T^ ' for the large caruncle which crowns his head, 

 like an exaggerated cock's comb, and falling 

 down on the culmen of the back often leaves an 

 open space in front of the base. This and his 

 Condor. have head and neck of a dull reddish colour, 



(After Swainson.) -iii-, e ^ ^ • ^ • 



Avrnikled into many lolds,* give nim a very pecu- 

 liar expression, and the hard dry appearance of the latter contrasts 

 with the ruft' of white down that separates it from the glossy black of 

 the rest of the plumage, except the edges of the Aving-coverts and the 

 secondary wing-quills which are white. The range of the Condor 

 extends from near the mouth of the Kio Negro on the east coast of 

 Patagonia, through the Strait of Magellan and along the Cordilleras 

 of the Andes to about lat. 8° N. It is possible that some of the 

 older Spanish accounts usually taken to refer to the Condor Avere 

 based upon the equally-large Vulture of North America, Cathartcs 

 or Pseudogryphus californianus, a species which seems to be rapidly 

 becoming extinct. 



CONIROSTEES, the fourth Family of Passeres in Dumt^ril's 

 arrangement (Zoologie analytique, p. 43), containing Starlings, 

 Finches, and several other groups ; but, though admitted by him 

 to be a wholly artificial assemblage, it is one that has been for a 

 long while recognized by systematic writers. 



COOT, a well-knoAvn British water-fowl, the Fulica atra of 

 Linnaius, belonging to the Family llallida', (Rail). The word Coot, 

 in some parts of England pronounced Cute, or Scute, is of uncertain 

 origin, but perhaps cognate with ScoUT and ScOTEii — both names of 

 aquatic birds — a possibility which seems to be more likely since the 

 name Macreuse, by which the Coot is known in the south of France, 

 being in the north of that country applied to the Scoter (CEdcmia 

 nigra) shews that, though belonging to very difterent Families, there 

 is in popular estimation some connexion between the birds.^ The 



^ It is owiii" to this interchange of their names that Yarrell in his British 

 Birds refers a description, assigned to Victor Hugo (who, I have the best 



