PHCENICOPTEKID^ PHCENICOPTERUS 107 



chestnut brown." The water where the nests were found was 

 about three feet deep. Colonel Butler further remarks that the 

 birds were not bad eating. 



Order VIII. ODONTOGLOSSJE. 



The Flamingoes, for which birds alone this Order was formed by 

 Nitzch, have been associated with the Ducks on the one hand and 

 with the Herons on the other, and there is no doubt that in their 

 anatomical characters they take a distinctly intermediate position 

 between these two Orders ; it will be better therefore, following 

 Huxley, to keep them apart by themselves. 



The Flamingoes have very long necks and legs, and the bill, 

 which is abruptly bent down in the middle of its length and is of a 

 very remarkable shape, at once distinguishes them from all other 

 birds. 



Anatomical characters are: Skull desmognothous and holorhinal, 

 nostrils pervious ; basipterygoid processes absent or rudimentary ; 

 mandible backwardly produced and curved behind its articulation 

 with the quadrate ; eighteen or nineteen cervical vertebrae ; right 

 carotid artery larger than the left, both united together at the base 

 of the neck ; tongue large and thick ; caeca well developed ; oil 

 gland tufted ; flexor perforans digitorum supplying the three anterior 

 toes alone ; ambiens, accessory femorocaudal, semitendinosus and 

 accessory semiteudinosus muscles of the thigh present. Eggs 

 white; young hatched covered with down, and able to run almost 

 at once. 



Only one family is included in this Order, and most authors 

 include all the species in the single genus Phcenicoptems. 



Family I. PH(ENICOPTERTDJG. 



Genus I. PHGENICOPTERUS. 



Type. 



Phoenicopterus, Briss. Orn. vi, p. 532 (1760) P. ruber. 



Phceniconaias, G. R. Gray, Ibis, 1869, p. 442 P. minor. 



Bill with upper mandible abruptly bent downwards in the middle 

 of its length, and smaller and more movable than the lower one, 

 which is stout and practically fixed ; the edges of both with a row of 



