102 CONTROSTRES—COOT 
years passed before examples became at all common in museums, 
and Temminck writing in 1823 (lee. d’Ois. livr. 23) was only able to 
refer to a single one at Paris, beside the two originally received in 
England. Seven years afterwards he figured a male which was 
alive at Paris, and says there was another in Holland. But at or 
about the same time the species was exhibited in London (Bennett, 
Gard. and Menag. Zool. Soc. ii. p. 8), where it has even bred, though 
the only young bird that, after an incubation lasting from 7th May 
to 30th June 1846, or 54 days, was hatched lved but six weeks 
(Broderip, Leaves from the Note-Book of a Naturalist, pp. 14-16). 
The male Condor is remarkable among birds 
for the large caruncle which crowns his head, 
like an exaggerated cock’s comb, and falling 
down on the culmen of the beak often leaves an 
open space in front of the base. This and his 
Sere bare head and neck of a dull reddish colour, 
(After Swainson.) B ° Ab f 
wrinkled into many folds, give him a very pecu- 
liar expression, and the hard dry appearance of the latter contrasts 
with the ruff of white down that separates it from the glossy black of 
the rest of the plumage, except the edges of the wing-coverts and the 
secondary wing-quills which are white. ‘The range of the Condor 
extends from near the mouth of the Rio Negro on the east coast of 
Patagonia, through the Strait of Magellan and along the Cordilleras 
of the Andes to about lat. 8° N. It is possible that some of the 
older Spanish accounts usually taken to refer to the Condor were 
based upon the equally-large Vulture of North America, Cathartes 
or Pseudogryphus californianus, a species which seems to be rapidly 
becoming extinct. 
CONIROSTRES, the fourth Family of PAsseres in Duméril’s 
arrangement (Zoologie analytique, p. 43), containnmg STARLINGS, 
FINCHES, and several other groups; but, though admitted by him 
to be a wholly artificial assemblage, it is one that has been for a 
long while recognized by systematic writers. 
COOT, a well-known British water-fowl, the Fulica atra of 
Linneus, belonging to the Family Rallidx (RAL). The word Coot, 
in some parts of England pronounced Cute, or Scute, is of uncertain 
origin, but perhaps cognate with Scour and ScoreR—both names of 
aquatic birds—a possibility which seems to be more likely since the 
name Macreuse, by which the Coot is known in the south of France, 
being in the north of that. country applied to the Scoter (Hdemia 
nigra) shews that, though belonging to very different Families, there 
is In popular estimation some connexion between the birds.t The 
1 It is owing to this interchange of their names that Yarrell in his British 
Birds yefers a description, assigned to Victor Hugo (who, I have the best 
