CRANE Ill 
The Crane’s power of uttering the sonorous and_ peculiar 
trumpet-like notes, of which mention has been made, is commonly 
and perhaps correctly ascribed to the formation of its trachea, 
which on quitting the lower end of the neck passes backward 
between the branches of the furcula and is received into a hollow 
space formed by the bony walls of the carina or keel of the sternum. 
Herein it makes three turns, and then runs upwards and backwards 
to the lungs. The apparatus on the whole much resembles that 
found in the Whooping SWANS, Cygnus musicus, C. buccinator, and 
others, though differing in some not unimportant details; but at 
the same time somewhat similar convolutions of the trachea occur 
in other birds which do not possess, so far as is known, the faculty 
of trumpeting. ‘The Crane emits its notes both during flight and 
while on the ground. In the latter case the neck and bill are 
uplifted and the mouth kept open during the utterance of the blast, 
which may be often heard from birds in confinement, especially at 
the beginning of the year. 
As usually happens in similar cases, the name of the once 
familiar British species is now used in a general sense, and applied 
to all others which are allied to it. Though by many systematists 
placed near or even among the Herons, there is no doubt that the 
Cranes have only a superficial resemblance and no real affinity to 
the Ardeidx. In fact the Gruidx form a somewhat isolated group. 
Prof. Huxley has included them together with the fallidz in his 
GERANOMORPH2A; but a more extended view of their various 
characters would probably assign them rather as relatives of the 
BusTarps—not that it must be thought that the two Families 
have not been for a very long time distinct. Grus, indeed, is a 
very ancient form, its remains appearing in the Miocene of 
France and Greece, as well as in the Pliocene and Post-pliocene of 
North America. In France, too, during the “Reindeer Period” 
there existed a huge species—the G. primigenia of M. Alphonse 
_ Milne-Edwards—which has doubtless been long extinct. At the 
present time Cranes inhabit all the great zoogeographical Regions 
of the earth, except New Zealand and the Neotropical, and some 
sixteen or seventeen species are discriminated. In Europe, besides 
the G. communis already mentioned, we have as an inhabitant that 
which is generally known as the Numidian Crane or DEMOISELLE. 
G. virgo, distinguished from every other by its long white ear-tufts. 
This bird is also widely distributed throughout Asia and Africa, 
and is said to have occurred in Orkney asa straggler. The eastern 
part of the Palearctic area is inhabited by six other species that do 
not frequent Europe, G. antigone, G. viridirostris or japonensis, G. 
monachus, G. leucauchen, G. nigricollis, and Gt. leucogeranus, of which 
the last is perhaps the finest of the Family, with nearly the 
whole plumage of a snowy white. The Indian Region, besides 
