RHE OSPRICGHES: AND” THEIR ALLIES. 
By C. WILLIAM BEEBE, 
CURATOR OF BIRDS. 
PART J.—GENERAL ACCOUNT. 
N December 25, 1904, the Ostrich House in the New York 
() Zoological Park was opened to the public. This build- 
ing will eventually be filled with birds of this great Subclass, 
of which there are four groups living on the earth to-day— 
the Ostriches, Rheas, Emeus, Cassowaries and, like dimunitive 
Davids among these Goliaths, the Apteryges or Kiwis. These 
birds well deserve an entire building to themselves, for not only 
are they of majestic appearance and of great interest to the ordt- 
nary visitor, but to the zoologist they offer for future work a 
host of unsolved problems.* 
These great birds possess much the same interest for us as 
does the remnant of the races of American aborigines. One, as 
surely as the other, is bound, before many years, to disappear 
from the surface of the earth and become but a memory.  I[n- 
deed, as the races which evolved the highest degree of civiliza- 
tion and culture indigenous to our continent have already van- 
ished, so the birds of extremest specialization in this Subclass 
have also disappeared. The Aztecs have vanished from Mexico, 
and the gigantic, twelve-foot, ostrich-like Moas have gone for- 
ever from the forests of New Zealand. 
The traditions of the Indians reach back seven or eight hun- 
dred years; while in the bodies and bones of the great running 
birds are hints which hark back millions of years. Indeed the 
more we study this isolated group of birds, the more does their 
origin become a mystery. Isolated they are, both in structure 
and distribution, to a more remarkable extent than any other 
eroup. Like Hatteria among reptiles, Amphioxus among fishes, 
and the lowly brachiopod mollusks, these birds are remnants of 
* Especial care has been given to the preparation of the large general descrip- 
tive labels of the species exhibited in the Ostrich House. A label is provided for 
each group, giving a concise account of the bird’s habits and characteristics, a 
map of distribution and photographs or drawings of its nest and eggs, chicks, 
wings, etc., to which is added a specimen of the actual feather of the bird. 
