CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE BUSTARDS, THICKNEES, AND CRANES, 

 Order ALECTORIDES. 



THE group known as Alectorides, under which were included in Mr. Sclater's 

 classification the cranes, bustards, and certain other families, is one of those 

 ill-defined assemblages of birds which afford illimitable difference of opinion as to 

 the relations of their constituents. For instance, some ornithologists remove the 

 bustards from the group to place them with the rails, while others would associate 

 them with the Limicolce. Others, again, would regard the rails (inclusive of the 

 bustards) and the cranes as the representatives of two main subdivisions of the 

 Alectorides. Moreover, but few accept the relationship of the thicknees to the 

 bustards; some writers placing them among the Limicolce, while Mr. Seebohm 

 would include them in the Gavice. Admitting that the assemblage may be to some 

 extent an artificial one, we think that its retention, at least as a provisional 

 measure, is convenient more especially as not only can it be defined, but that, in 

 its present form, it aids in the definition of the two succeeding groups. 



All the Alectorides 1 agree with the game-birds and rails in having slit 

 (schizognathous) palates, and their young covered with down, and active almost 

 immediately after birth, as well as in the absence of a projecting (ectepicondylar) 

 process on the outer side of the lower end of the humerus. They are further 

 characterised by the truncation of the hinder end of the lower jaw ; and by this 

 feature, as well as by the absence of any perforation of the extremity of the 



1 Except the kagu. 



