226 AVES ORDER GALLIFORMES. 



Game-Birds of the partridge type, 'which have retained some of the osteo- 

 logical characters of their s truth ious ancestors. Of the great tinamou 

 (Rhyiichotus rufescens) of Argentina, Mr. W. H. Hudson writes :" This 

 species is solitary in its habits, conceals itself very closely in the grass, and 

 flies with the greatest reluctance. I doubfc if there is anywhere a bird with 

 such a sounding flight as a tinamou ; the whirr of its wings can only be com- 

 pared to the rattling of a vehicle driven at great speed over a stony road. 

 From the moment it rises until it alights again, there is no cessation in the 

 rapid vibration of the wings ; but, like a ball thrown from the hand, the 

 bird flies straight away with extraordinary violence until the impelling force 

 is spent, when it slopes gradually to the earth, the distance it is able to 

 accomplish at a flight being from 800 to 1,500 yards. This flight it can 

 repeat when driven up again, as many as three times, after which the bird 

 can rise no more." 



, This is a very large order of birds, and may be divided into four big sub- 

 orders, viz. the Meyapodii, or mound-builders ; the Graces, or curassows ; 



the Phasianiy consisting of the grouse, pheasants, partridges, 



The Game-Birds. guinea-fowls, and turkeys ; and, lastly, the bustard-quails, or 



Order Galli- hemipodes (Hemipodii). Everyone is familiar with the ap- 



formes. pearance of an ordinary Game-Bird, such as the common fowl, 



or the, turkey, the pheasant, the partridge, or the grouse. 

 The mound-builder, the curassow, and the bustard-quail are less known, 

 because in Great Britain we have no representative of these sub-orders, 

 though occasionally examples of each of them may be seen in captivity. The 

 palate in the Game-Birds is cleft, or, as it is usually called, " schizngnathous," 

 and another peculiar character is the perforation of the episternal process of 

 the breast -bone, or sternum, so that the feet of the coracoid-bones meet 

 through the opening thus afforded. 



These curious birds have a somewhat remarkable distribution, as they 

 extend from Australia throughout the Malayan Archipelago to the Island of 



Labuan and the Philippine Archipelago. They are not 



The found in Java or Sumatra, but have recently been discovered 



Mound -Builders, in the Kangean group of islands; and a species is also known 



Sub-Order from the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Thus it will 



Megapodiv. be seen that the distribution of the megapodes is restricted 



to the south-east of Asia and Australia. 



Professor Huxley separated the megapodes of the Austro-Malayan sub- 

 region and the curassows of the neo-tropical region into a sub-order, Perlstero- 

 podes, in contrast to the Alectoropodes, or true Game-Birds, because they have 

 a smaller inner notch of the sternum, this inner notch being less than half 

 the length of the entire sternum, whereas in the ordinary Game-Birds the 

 inner notch of the sternum is more than half the length of the entire sternum. 

 Again, in the megapodes and curassows, the hallux, or hind-toe, is on the 

 same level as the other toes, whereas in the Alectoropodes the hallux is 

 raised above the level of the other toes. Of the mound-builders there 

 are seven genera, of which the most striking types are the true mound- 

 builders (Megapodius], the brush-turkeys (Talegallus), and the maleo-bird 

 (Meyacepha lum) . 



The maleo is confined to the Island of Celebes, and is the only one of this 

 dull-coloured group of Game-Birds which shows any pretension to colour. Ib 

 has a breast of a delicate pink, and an ornamental bare knob on the crown, 

 but is otherwise of a dusky colour like the rest of the group. Dr. A. R. 



