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XI. On the Anatomy of the Apteryx Australis, Shaw. Part II. (Myology.) 

 By Richard Owen, F.R.S., F.Z.S., S^c. &fc. 



Read February 22, 1842. 



XHE former part of this memoir on the Anatomy of the Apteryx australis' in- 

 cludes the description of the osteology and splanchnology, with the male organs of 

 generation ; the present part is devoted to the illustration of the myology of the same 

 rare and anomalous bird. The specimens which I have dissected for the muscles were 

 afforded me by the Earl of Derby, President, and by Mr. George Bennett, F.L.S., of 

 Sydney, Corresponding Member of the Zoological Society, to whom I am much in- 

 debted for such valuable opportunities of completing this monograph on the Apteryx. 



The muscular system offers a subject of peculiar interest to the Comparative Anatomist 

 when studied in a species which, in its general proportions and habits of life, deviates 

 in so extreme a degree from the rest of the circumscribed and well-marked class to 

 which it belongs. It is also a department of the anatomy of birds which, from the mi- 

 nute attention and length of time required for its accurate investigation, has been com- 

 monly passed over in anatomical monographs of species, but which the rarity of the 

 Apteryx and the excellent state of preservation of the specimens dissected have both 

 stimulated and enabled me to pursue with a degree of care which will be found, I trust, 

 when tested by subsequent dissection, to have left little to be added to the myology of 

 the species. 



In the application of the facts detailed to the higher generalizations of the philosophy 

 of organized bodies, it will be found that the unity of the ornithic type is strictly pre- 

 served, though under the extremest modifications ; the characteristic peculiarities, for 

 example, of the muscles of the spine and those of the wing, are all present, but the pro- 

 portionate development of these classes of muscles is reversed, the spinal muscles being 

 at their maximum, the alar muscles at their minimum of development. Very interest- 

 ing peculiarities are likewise manifested by the muscles of the skin, with which I propose 

 to introduce the details of the muscular system of the small Struthious bird of New 

 Zealand. 



Muscles of the Skin. 



No detailed description of the muscles of the skin in Birds has been given either in 

 the systematic works on Comparative Anatomy, or in particular treatises ; these muscles 

 appear indeed in general to be too irregularly or too feebly developed to have attracted 



' Transactions of the Zoological Society, Vol. II. Part 4, p. 257. 

 VOL. III. PART IV. 2 P 



