534 THE GANNET 



The Trachea and Syrinx. — The trachea or windpipe is 

 divided at its orifice into two apertures, oblong and trans- 

 verse, which extend to about .2 inch. It is 8.7 in length, 

 and about the same circumference throughout. I have 

 counted about a hundred rings in one Gannet, and a 

 hundred and twenty-eight in another. At the lower 

 extremity there are two small glands, the size of a pea, 

 which were first noticed by Montagu. Professor Garrod 

 shows them in his figure of the windpipe, just above the 

 bifurcation of the bronchi,* and they are again accurately 

 figured by Mr. C. J. Maynard, who considers them to be 

 shrunken thymus glands. f 



The syrinx, — a structure peculiar to birds, — or lower 

 larynx, situated at the bifurcation of the bronchi (con- 

 sidered by all anatomists to be the voice-organ in birds, 

 in which the tongue probably plays no part), is but 

 little developed in the Gannet, in spite of its hoarse cries 

 of " Varroch, Varroch, Kirra, Cree, Oree." The Gannet's 

 syrinx has been figured by the late Professor Garrod 

 in the "Proceedings of The Zoological Society" (1870, 

 PI. XXVIII.), and some comparisons drawn between its 

 structure and that of Plotus anhinga. 



*" Scientific Papers of the Late Alfred Henry Garrod," 1881, p. 335, 

 PI. XX. 



t ■' Contributions to Science," by C. J. Maynard, 1889, p. 110. 



