HEATH-COCK—HEMIPODE 415 
The interatrial septum is likewise complete, and is generally 
wholly membranaceous, though in the fatitz and some others 
partly muscular. In the middle it is thinner and more transparent, 
but there is no depression or fossa ovalis as in Mammals. 
HEATH-COCK and HEATH-HEN, originally names by which 
what we now know as the Blackcock and Greyhen were called ; 
but on the North-American continent, though there no heather 
grows, applied to one or more species of GROUSE inhabiting the 
open country. 
HEATHER-BLEAT or HEATHER-BLITE, names given to 
the SNIPE in the breeding season, from the sound made by the 
eock-bird when performing his love-flight. Coe rea ee 
HEMIPODE, a recognized English rendering of Temminck’s 
generic name Hemipodius (1815), which was anticipated by Bon- 
naterre’s Jurniz (1790), for a small group of birds some of which 
Anglo-Indians often call “ Bustard-Quails” or “ Button-Quails.” 
Their complete distinction from the true QUAILS, and therefore 
from the GALLINA (or RASoRES of some systematists), which had 
already been asserted, was proved by Prof. Huxley (Proc. Zool. Soc. 
1868, pp. 303, 304), who established for them an independent 
croup, TURNICOMORPH&, differing in his opinion “much more 
from the Alectoromorphx, Pteroclomorphx, and Peristeromorphe than 
these groups do from one another.” This view is no doubt in 
the main correct ; but most systematists have not gone so far, 
and deem the TZurnicide to be but a Family of Gallinv. The 
genus Turniz is the subject of a very special monograph by Mr. 
Ogilvie-Grant (Ibis, 1889, pp. 446-475; 1892, p. 346), in which 
23 species are admitted, but some points of great interest are 
therein but lightly treated. This being one of the few groups of 
birds in which the females are generally more finely coloured than 
the males—the sex supposed, and probably with truth, to perform 
the duty of incubation—the author’s chief conclusions are that 
specific distinctions are afforded rather by the females than by the 
males, which generally so much resemble the young of the other 
sex as to furnish few specific characters, while the former when adult 
often differ widely ; then, that the variegated markings (in some 
species very notable) tend to disappear with age; next, that the 
males seem to retain the characters of youth longer than the 
females; and, lastly, that the characteristic adornments of the 
adult females denote maturity, and are permanent. Members of 
this genus are found from Spain and Sicily throughout Africa and 
Madagascar, southern Asia to China, the Indian Archipelago and 
Australia. The species from the western part of the Mediterranean 
Province is 7. sylvatica, known in the Iberian peninsula by the 
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