PULEASTRZAE—PYVGOSTYLE 753 
Ogilvie Grant (Cat. B. Br. Mus. xxii. pp. 310-316) recognizes 5 
other species, one inhabiting Affghanistan, a second Nepal and the 
rest Tibet or China. 
PULLASTRA#, an Order proposed by Sundevall (K. Vet.-Acad. 
Handl. 1836, pp. 69, 116) to contain the CurAssows, LYRE-BIRD, 
PLANTAIN-EATERS and PIGEONS ; subsequently abandoned by him ; 
but in the meanwhile brought forward by Prof. Lilljeborg (Proc. 
Zool. Soc. 1866, pp. 11, 15), with the addition of the MmEGAPODES 
and omission of Menura and Musophagide. 
PURRE (AS. Pur, Wright’s Vocabularies, i. p. 21), a common 
name for the DUNLIN in its winter-dress, especially among pro- 
fessional gunners, who are apt to believe, as did ornithologists for a 
long while, that the Purre and the Dunlin are distinct species. 
PUTTOCK, an old name for the KiTE and BuzzarD, suggested 
by Prof. Skeat (Ztymol. Dict. p. 480) to signify Poot- or Poult-Hawk, 
that is to say the Hawk that especially preys on the young of 
Gallinaceous birds. 
PYGOPODES, Illiger’s name in 1811 for a group consisting of 
the genera Colymbus (= Podicipes, GREBE), Hudytes (= Colymbus, 
Diver), Uria (GUILLEMOT), Mormon (PUFFIN), and Alca (AUK), and 
by many writers regarded as a reasonably natural group or Order. 
PYGOSTYLE is the terminal bony expansion of the last 6 or 
7 caudal vertebre which in almost all Carinatx coalesce into a 
subtriangular upright plate or blade carrying the RECTRICES. 
Archxopterye (pp. 278-279) shews the most primitive condition 
by possessing about 21 free post-sacral vertebre, of which 
each, from the 9th to the 20th, supports a pair of well- 
developed rectrices. In all other Birds, as yet known, the number 
of post-sacral vertebrz is considerably diminished, partly by the 
fusion of about 6 of them with the PELVIS, and partly by reduc- 
tion at the distal end, so that not more than some 13 caudal 
vertebre are left, of which about one-half are free while the rest 
form the Pygostyle—a result possibly due to the greater use and 
development of the rectrices. However, Hesperornis (pp. 649-650), 
the Ratite and Tinamidx retain, even when adult, 13 free 
vertebre, which diminish in size towards the tip of the tail, and 
thus these birds present in that respect an embryonic condition, 
though it is more probable that in them the absence of a Pygostyle 
has been brought about in a secondary way by the gradual loss or 
reduction of once strongly-developed rectrices, than that it should 
be the retention of a primitive feature. A Pygostyle has been 
occasionally observed in Apteryx, and the specimen of an old Ostrich 
in the Cambridge Museum has one, some 2 inches high and 
nearly an inch and a half long. In Ichthyornis (p. 651) it is very 
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