112 CRANIUM— CREST 



being visited in winter by four of the species already named, 

 has two that are pecrdiar to it, G. coUaris and G. antigone. The 

 Australian Region possesses a large species known to the colonists 

 as the " Native Companion," G. australasiana ; while the Nearctic 

 area is tenanted by two species, G. arnericana and G. canadensis, to 

 say nothing of the possibility of a fourth, G. schlegeli, a little-known 

 and somewhat obscure bird, finding its habitat here. In the 

 Ethiopian Region Ave have two species, G. paradisea and G. carun- 

 culata, which do not occur out of Africa, as well as two others 

 forming the group known as " Crowned Cranes " — differing much 

 from other members of the family, and justifiably placed in a 

 separate genus, JBalearica. One of these, J3. j^ccvonina, inhabits 

 Northern and Western Africa, while the other, B. chrysopelargus or 

 regulorum, is confined to the eastern and southern parts of that 

 continent.^ 



CRANIUM (latinized from Kpaviov, a skull) anatomically 

 applied to the bony and cartilaginous parts of the skull "with- 

 out the jaws and the palato-pterygo-quadrate bones, and therefore 

 practically equivalent to those parts which enclose the cranial cavity 

 and the three principal sense-organs (see Skeleton). 



CREEPER (Dutch Kruiper, Swedish Krypare, Norsk Kryher), a 

 term employed by ornithologists in a very vague sense, but chiefly 

 to render Certhia as used by Linnaeus and his immediate successors, 

 and thus including forms belonging to more perfectly distinct 

 Families than can here be named ; for it was customary to thrust 

 therein almost every outlandish Passerine bird which could not be 

 conveniently assigned to any other of the then recognized genera, 

 provided only that it had a somewhat attenuated and decurved bill. 

 Taken by itself, " Creeper " signifies nothing in modern ornithology, 

 and provincially it is very frequently used for the Nuthatch. 

 With a prefix, as Tree -Creeper, it has a much more definite 

 meaning, and in England is the Certhia familiaris of Linnaeus. 



CREST. Feathery crests need no further comment than 

 that they seem to be entirely ornamental, favourite objects of sexual 

 selection, and therefore mostly developed in the male sex ; they are 

 generally erectile by the aid of cutaneous and subcutaneous muscles, 

 notably by the musculus cucullaris. Horny crests, often supported 

 by swollen cancellous outgrowths of the maxillary, nasal, and 

 frontal bones (as in Hornbills and Cassowaries), have been de- 

 scribed in connexion with the Bill. Very peculiar are the entirely 



^ An admirably succinct account of all the different specie.s was communi- 

 cated by the late Mr. Blyth to I'he Field newspaper in 1873 (vol. xl. p. 631 ; vol. 

 xli. pp. 7, 61, 136, 189, 248, 384, 408, 418), which has since been published in a 

 separate form with additions by tlie editor, Mr. Tegetmeier, as The Natural 

 History of the Cruiies (London : 1881). 



