306 Zoological Society : — 



the Sand-Grouse, without referring to what Dr. Andrew Smith tells 

 us of Pterocles gutturalis, Sm., in his ' Illustrations of the Zoology 

 of South Africa.' 



" First, what must be considered a ' Pluvialine ' character, the eggs 

 are of a ' dirty- white or cream-colour, marked with irregular streaks 

 and blotches of a pale-rusty and pale-grey or ash -colour ; ' and the 

 second point is the careless habit of laying them upon the bare 

 ground*. This habit, so untypical ornithically, so unlike the almost 

 human family tenderness of their relatives, the Pigeons, is, however, 

 much like the conduct of the unthinking ' giants ' that come next 

 below them in the zoological scale. 



" So that not only the Ostrich, but also the Sand-Grouse 'leaveth 

 her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth 

 that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break 

 them.' 



" If birds were intelligent in the human sense of the word, their 

 relationship to the reptiles would be as humiliating as our affinity to 

 the Simice ; but the fact is certain that these low types not merely 

 have in themselves obscure anatomical resemblances, but their instincts 

 and habits are plain, out-spoken evidences of their nearness in nature 

 to ' the creeping things after their kind.' 



" I now leave Syrrhaptes (which, at first sight, seems to run in 

 some mysterious way without the help of feet) to speak of the stilted 

 Hemipodius, an aberrant gallinaceous bird, which has escaped from 

 its more steady walking allies to join the true coursing birds. 

 Without heel, with not only naked tarsi, but with the lower half of 

 the tibiae bare ; what can these birds be but true essential ' Grallce.' 



" They may be in a sense grallatorial, but are not really so, as we 

 shall see, if we work out their mixed affinities. 



" The Hemipodii (some of which are very small, and, like some 

 other small creatures, very pugnacious) stand pretty exactly between 

 the Tinamous and the Quails ; but not quite so, for the Pigeon comes 

 in again, even here, with a touch of kinship, the connecting links 

 being the Didunculus and the dwarf Ground-Pigeons (Chamcepelia). 



" The characters of head are almost equally divided between those 

 of the Ground-Pigeon and the Quail ; the sternum, between the Quail 

 and Tinamou ; yet the legs are those of a little Sand-Plover, although 

 they are hinged upon a pelvis which would require but little altering 

 to suit a Quail. 



" I must ask for more time and space, if not to settle this diffi- 

 culty, yet to put it into a proper form for some fuller mind to ex- 

 plain ; for it seems to me that my position of ' interpreter ' is in this 

 case more perplexing than that of the purblind patriarch, who found 

 the hands of his hairy son Esau combined with the vocal organs of 

 the smooth-limbed Jacob. 



" I have now merely to speak of the Tinamous ; and in their case 

 also I must merely indicate the kind of task they present to him 

 who would fairly work them out. 



* Penny Cyclop., art. Tetraonidce. 



