GALLINZ, GALLINACEOUS BIRDS. ; 229 
terrestrial ; the legs are of mean length, and stout; the toes four (with rare excep- 
tions), three in front, generally connected by basal webbing, but sometimes free, 
and one behind, almost always short and elevated, occasionally absent. The tibice 
are rarely naked below; the tarsi often feathered, as the toes also sometimes are; 
but ordinarily both these are naked, scutellate and reticulate, and often developing 
processes (spurs) of horny substance with a bony core, like the horns of cattle. 
The bill as a rule is short, stout, convex and obtuse; never cered, nor extensively 
membranous; the base of the culmen parts prominent antize, which frequently fill 
the nasal fossze ; when naked the nostrils show a superincumbent scale. The head is 
frequently naked, wholly or partly, and often develops remarkable fleshy processes. 
The wings are short, stout and concave, conferring power of rapid, whirring, but 
unprotracted, flight. The tail varies extremely; it is entirely wanting in some 
genera, enormously developed in others; the rectrices vary in number, but are 
commonly more than twelve. The sternum, with certain exceptions, shows a 
peculiar conformation; the posterior notches seen in most birds, are inordinately 
enlarged, so that the bone, viewed vertically, seems in most of its extent to be 
simply a narrow central projection, with two long backward processes on each side, 
the outer commonly hammer-shaped ; this form is modified in the tinamous, curas- 
sows, mound-birds and sand-grouse, and not at all shown in the hoazin. The palate 
is schizognathous ; there are cther distinctive osteological characters. As a rule, the 
digestive system presents an ample special crop, a highly muscular gizzard, and 
large ceeca; ‘‘ the inferior larynx is always devoid of intrinsic muscles” (Hualey). 
Excepting the Pteroclide (?), there are aftershafts, and a circlet around the oil-gland. 
Gallincee are precocial. A part of them are polygamous —a circumstance shown in its 
perfection by the sultan of the dunghill with his disciplined harem ; and in all such 
the sexes are conspicuously dissimilar. The rest are monogamous, and the sexes of 
these are as a rule nearly or quite alike. The eggs are very numerous, usually laid 
on the ground, in a rude nest, or none. The order is cosmopolitan ; but most of its 
sroups haye a special geographical distribution; its great economic importance is 
perceived in all forms of domestic poultry, and principal game-birds of various 
countries ; and it is unsurpassed in beauty—some of these birds offer the most 
gorgeous coloring of the class. The characters of the order have been ably 
exposed by Blanchard, Parker, Huxley and other distinguished anatomists. I 
will briefly recount the exotic families. 
1. The tinamous, Tinamide, are so remarkably distinguished by certain cranial 
characters that Huxley was induced to make them one of his four primary divisions 
of carinate birds. The palate is ‘“‘completely struthious;” the sternum has a 
singular conformation. An obvious external feature, in many cases, is the entire 
lack of tail feathers (only elsewhere wanting among grebes) ; in others, however, 
these are developed. Confined to Central and South America, and represented by 
about forty species, of six or eight genera. 
2. The wonderful hoazin of Guiana, Opisthocomus cristatus, is the sole repre- 
sentative of a family Opisthocomide, one of the most isolated and puzzling forms 
in ornithology, sometimes placed near the Musophagide, but assigned by maturer 
judgment to the fowls, which it resembles in most respects. The sternum and 
shoulder-girdle are anomalous; the keel is cut away in front; the furcula anchylose 
with the coracoids (very rare) and with the manubrium of the sternum (unique) ; 
the digestive system is scarcely less singular. 
3. The bush-quails of the Old World, Twurnicide, differ widely from other 
