90 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



ORDER GRUIFORMES. THE CRANES AND THEIR 



ALLIES. 



THE Cranes and their allies constitute a somewhat isolated and heterogeneous 

 group, more or less distantly allied to the RALLIFOHMES, variously asso- 

 ciated by different systematists with the Herons, the Plovers, the Bustards, and so 

 on. Their sternum contains no notch on the posterior margin. In the modification 

 of their cranial bones they are schizognathous, whilst their nostrils are schizorhiiial 

 (except in a single family, the Psophiidse, in which the nostrils are holorhinal). 

 The dorsal vertebrae are heterocoelous. Their external characters vary con- 

 siderably in the various families, with one of which only we are concerned in the 

 present volume, and which will be described in detail below. So far as is known 

 the young are hatched covered with down, and able to run soon after breaking 

 from the shell. As the method of nidification is yet unknown in some of the 

 families, it is impossible to say whether this is general or not. The birds 

 contained in the family represented in our avifauna are double-moulted, but 

 whether this is universal in the order is not yet known. 



The birds in the present order number about twenty-seven species. These 

 may be subdivided into four families, viz., the Gruidse, the Aramidae, the 

 lihinochetidas, and the Psophiidae. But one of these is represented in the British 

 Islands. The birds in this order are almost cosmopolitan continentally ; but the 

 Khinochetidae (with a single species) is restricted to New Caledonia. 



