PREFACE. V 



apteria), the presence or absence of an aftershaft on the 

 body-feathers,, the occurrence of down, the presence or 

 absence of a uropygial oil-gland, and its being tufted, i. e. 

 partially surrounded by a circlet of feathers, or naked, and 

 the number of remiges and rectrices, are amongst the points 

 of importance. Latterly, since the late Mr. R. S. Wray, in 

 the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' for 1887, showed 

 that, in several orders, the fifth secondary quill or cubital, 

 counting from the distal extremity of the ulna, is wanting, 

 some importance has been attached to the fact, and those 

 birds have been termed quincubital which retain the remex 

 in question, whilst those forms in which it is absent are dis- 

 tinguished as aquincubital. 



Most of the terms employed are easily understood, but 

 four diagrams are added for the explanation of the names 

 applied to the bones of the palate and the muscles of the 

 thigh. The two figures illustrative of the former, which are 

 used by permission of their author, the late Professor Huxley, 

 and are taken from his classical paper in the f Proceedings of 

 the Zoological Society' for 1867, serve to explain the two 

 most important types of palatal structure in carinate birds 

 the " schizognathous " and " desmognathous."" In the des- 

 mognathous palate the maxillo-palatines are united across 

 the median line, and the vomer is either small and slender 

 or rudimentary. In schizognathous skulls the maxillo- 

 palatines are usually elongate and lamellar and do not unite 

 either with the vomer or with each other. In both the 

 vomer, if present, is pointed in front, not broadly truncated 

 as in the segithognathous type, represented by the Raven 

 (Vol. I. p. 4) . There are other distinctions in these three 

 types of bony palate, but those mentioned are the most con- 

 spicuous. The fourth principal type, the dromaeognathous, 

 is not found in any Indian birds. 



The muscles of the thigh are shown in the two figures 

 taken from the works of Garrod and Forbes, the former of 

 whom attached great importance to them as evidence of 

 affinity. The ' ambiens ' muscle was regarded by him as 

 affording a clue to the whole system, and by means of it he 

 divided all Carinate birds into Homalogonatse, in which the 

 muscle (with a few aberrant exceptions) was present, and 

 the Anomalogonatse, in which it was absent. The other thigh- 

 muscles, to the presence or absence of which he attached 

 importance, were the femoro-caudal, accessory femoro- caudal, 

 semitendinosus, and accessory semitendinosus. 



