4 HABITS OP BIRDS. 



her head backward to her rump, with her hill 

 catches hold of the fore-named tuft, and pressing the 

 glandules, forces out the oily pap, and therewithal 

 anointing the disjoined parts of the feathers, and 

 drawing them out with her bill, recomposes and 

 places them in due order, and causes them to stick 

 faster together*." " The glands which secrete the 

 oil," says Blumenbach, "on the upper part of the 

 tail, are largest in aquatic birds ; in some of which, 

 as the Muscovy duck (Anas moschata), the secreted 

 substance has a musk-like odour t" The statement 

 just given from Willughby is adopted by most of 

 the systematic writers, though a few of them take 

 no notice whatever of the existence of the rump 

 glands. " On the back," we are told by LinnaBus, 

 " or upper surface of the rump, there are two glands 

 which secrete an oily fluid, with which the birds 

 anoint their feathers J." " The lower part of the 

 back," says Dr. Latham, " is furnished with a double 

 gland, secreting an oily fluid for the use of dressing 

 the feathers ." 



The recent authors who adopt this opinion would 

 appear, from their taking no notice of them, 

 to be unacquainted with the observations of M. 

 Reaumur, which we shall abstract. The glands on 

 the rump, he remarks, secrete an unctuous fluid, 

 discharged in some birds by one, and in others by 

 two excretory canals. Poultry have but one of 

 these canals, which consists of a conical fleshy pipe of 

 a series of rings, placed almost perpendicular to the 

 rump ; and when this gland is pressed by the fingers, 

 the fluid, thickish in consistence, is seen to exude. 

 But in a .peculiar species of barn-door fowls, without 



* Ray's Willughby, p. 3. 

 t Comp. Anat. by Lawrence and Coulson, p. 147. 



J Ker's Linnaeus, p. 409. 

 General History of Birds, i. 22. 



