Nezv Investigations into the Distribution of the Vocal Muscles. 



kermulrenii Less^ and Paradisea apoda^. Of the former they have only mentioned the 

 windings of the trachea beneath the skin of the abdomen, and thorax, but have forgotten the 

 larynx, and their description of the trachea with its muscles is unintelligible. 



III. New Investigations into the Arrangement of the Vocal 

 Muscles, in the Old and New World forms. 



Having been for a very long time convinced that there still remained much to be 

 done in the classification of birds by the aid of Anatomy, and that Cuvier had left this 

 portion of his Kegne Animal quite unfinished, I have for many years striven to collect 

 a large number of birds, in spirit, for this purpose. I have lately also studied the Passerines 

 in the Anatomical Museum. The first object that I placed before myself, was to learn 

 the arrangement of the vocal muscles. And thus, at the same time, new facts presented 

 themselves, which led further than this aim of mine. As regards the Passerines of the 

 Old World the views put forward by Nitzsch have not been changed in any essential 

 particulars : I have met, among them, with no other forms of larynx than the muscular 

 organ of voice, and the larynx of the so-called Picariae with only one muscle. I have 

 examined seventy-two genera of the Singing Birds of the Old World with the muscular organ 

 of voice. The number of Passerines of the Old World without the muscular organ of voice 

 is, on the contrary, very small; namely, Cj/pselus, Cajmmulgus, Podargus, Coracias, Eurystomus, 

 Eurylairms, Colius, Alcedo, MerojJS, TJpupa, and Buceros, to which probably Cali/ptomena 

 should be also added, although this genus has not yet been examined. As regards the New 

 World, and especially South America, my views about the Singing Birds and Picariae 

 have been completely changed. I have examined over one hundred genera of Passerines from 

 America. The larynx, without the muscular organ of voice, of the kind peculiar to the 

 Picariae, is found among very many of the American genera of Singing Birds. Almost the 

 half of all the genera of American Passerines exanyned— without counting the Scansores — 

 are not Singing Birds with the muscular organ of voice, according to my observations. The 

 majority of them have only the simple Picarian larynx ; but there are among them peculiar 

 and more complex larynges with one, or more than one muscle, which are very different 

 from the so-called muscular organ of voice, and formed on quite another principle. Finally 

 the most complex musculature, so far as the number of muscles is concerned, is that 



» Voyage autour du monde sur la corvette la Coquille par Duperrey. Zoologie. Paris, 1826, p. 636. 

 ^ lb. p. 596. 



