HE A TH-COCK—HEMIPODE 415 



The interatrial septum is likewise complete, and is generally 

 wholly membranaceous, though in the Ratitm and some others 

 partly muscular. In the middle it is thinner and more transparent, 

 but there is no depression or fossa ovalis as in Mammals. 



HEATH-COCK and HEATH-HEN, originally names by which 

 what we now know as the Blackcock and Greyhen were called ; 

 but on the North -American continent, though there no heather 

 grows, applied to one or more species of Grouse inhabiting the 

 open country. 



HEATHER-BLEAT or HEATHER-BLITE, names given to ^/[ j 

 the Snipe in the breeding season, from the sound made by the Cff^^^^^' 

 cock-bird when performing his love-flight. '■ 



HEMIPODE, a recognized English rendering of Temminck's 

 generic name Hemipodius (1815), which was anticipated by Bon- 

 naterre's Turnix (1790), for a small group of birds some of which 

 Anglo-Indians often call " Bustard- Quails " or "Button -Quails." 

 Their complete distinction from the true Quails, and therefore 

 from the Galling (or Rasores of some systematists), which had 

 ah-eady been asserted, was proved by Prof. Huxley (Froc. Zool. Soc. 

 1868, pp. 303, 304), who established for them an independent 

 group, TURNICOMORPH^, differing in his opinion "much more 

 from the Aledoromorphai, Pterodomm'phae, and Peristeromcnyhai than 

 these groups do from one another." This view is no doubt in 

 the main correct ; but most systematists have not gone so far, 

 and deem the Turnicidse to be but a Family of Gallinse. The 

 genus Turnix is the subject of a very special monograph by Mr. 

 Ogilvie-Grant {lUs, 1889, pp. 446-475; 1892, p. 346), in which 

 23 species are admitted, but some points of great interest are 

 therein but lightly treated. This being one of the few groups of 

 birds in which the females are generally more finely coloured than 

 the males — the sex supposed, and probably with truth, to perform 

 the duty of incubation — the author's chief conclusions are that 

 specific distinctions are afforded rather by the females than by the 

 males, which generally so much resemble the young of the other 

 sex as to furnisli few specific characters, while the former when adult 

 often differ widely ; then, that the variegated markings (in some 

 species very notable) tend to disappear with age ; next, tliat the 

 males seem to retain the characters of youth longer than the 

 females ; and, lastly, that the characteristic adornments of the 

 adult females denote maturity, and are permanent. Members of 

 this genus are found from Spain and Sicily throughout Africa and 

 Madagascar, southern Asia to China, the Indian Archipelago and 

 Australia. The species from the western part of the Mediterranean 

 Province is T. sylvatica, known in the Iberian peninsula by the 



