480 KIDDA W—KIDNEYS 
verioides in Florida.t Of other Kestrels it remains to say that 7. 
moluccensis is widely spread throughout the islands of the Malay 
archipelago, while 7. cenchroides seems to inhabit the whole of 
Australia, and has occurred in Tasmania (Proc. Roy. Soc. Tasmania, 
1875, pp. 7, 8). No Kestrel is found in New Zealand, but an 
approach to the form is made by the very peculiar Harpe nove- 
zelandix (of which a second race or species has been described, H. 
brunnea or H. ferox) the “Sparrow-Hawk,” “QuAIL-HAwK,” and 
“Bush-Hawk” of the colonists—a bird of much higher courage 
than any Kestrel, and perhaps exhibiting the more generalized and 
ancestral type from which both Kestrels and Falcons may have 
descended. 
KIDDAW, one of the many local names of the GUILLEMOT. 
KIDNEYS, renes, the organs of the Excretory System for the 
discharge as urine of the nitrogenous waste-matter of the blood. 
In Birds they are comparatively large, weighing about one- 
hundredth part of the whole body, and extend from the posterior 
margin of the lungs to nearly the end of the pelvis, filling the 
cavities between the iliac bones and the sacral vertebre, the trans- 
verse processes of which produce deep impressions upon the dorsal 
surface of the Kidneys, and divide them into a number of irregular 
lobes ; but their ventral surface is almost smooth. Near their 
anterior end, and close to the vertebral column, lie the genital 
glands (ovaries or festes), the ducts of which (oviduct or vas deferens 
as the case may be), run, together with the ureter, upon the 
ventral surface of the Kidneys. Resting against these glands, there 
is on each side a reddish or yellowish-brown body of irregular 
shape, the supra-renal or adrenal capsule, an organ of still problematic 
significance. In most Birds each Kidney is more or less divided 
into three lobes, of which the anterior is generally the largest, and 
the middle one the smallest. Sometimes the two Kidneys partly 
coalesce across the vertebral column, so that the unpaired dorsal 
aorta and the inferior vena cava are enclosed in their substance ; 
but their shape, size and the number of their principal lobes 
depend much on the configuration of the sacrum and pelvis, and 
are scarcely of practical taxonomic value. The Kidneys are shut 
off from the body-cavity by a peritoneal lamella, and their minute 
structure as well as their vascular system is very complicated. 
Each possesses a transparent sheath of connective tissue, on the 
removal of which the dark brown substance of the organ is seen ta 
consist of an enormous number of convoluted and tightly-packed 
lobules, and each of these lobules is pervaded by renal arteries and 
veins with their capillaries, and contains the uriniferous tubules that 
1 The absence of any Kestrel from Jamaica is a most curious fact, considering 
the abundance of the form in other parts of the West Indies. 
