CRANES. 463 



membrane) furnished with sharply-pointed claws. The short wings have the 

 fourth quill the longest; the tail is abbreviated; and the plumage is generally 

 elongated above, while beneath it becomes downy. In the common trumpeter, or 

 agami (P. occipitans), the general hue of the plumage is black, with purple and 

 greenish reflections in certain parts, and steely blue on the lower neck and breast. 

 The iris is reddish brown, the bare skin round the eye, as well as the leg, flesh- 

 coloured, and the beak greyish white. The trumpeters are forest-haunting birds, 

 living in troops, which may number as many as a hundred or two hundred head ; 

 and taking their name from the peculiarly clear and trumpet -like cry, which 

 is uttered with widely opened beak, and lasts for fully a minute. To produce 

 this deep-toned cry, the windpipe is specially modified, being elongated so as to 

 extend under the skin of the abdomen. The trumpeters are poor flyers, nesting 

 on the ground beneath the foot of trees, where they lay ten or more bright 

 green eggs, and subsisting on fruits, corn, and insects. By the natives of Brazil 

 these birds are tamed and domesticated for the purpose of protecting ordinary 

 poultry ; and in this state exhibit remarkable attachment and affection towards 

 their owners, whom they follow about as closely as does a dog. 



THE CRANES. 

 Family Gnu ID M. 



For a long period associated with the herons and storks, to which they present 

 a marked outward similarity, the cranes differ widely from those birds in the 

 structure of the palate, and the condition of their new-born young, as well as in 

 many features of the anatomy of their skeleton and soft parts. Externally, cranes 

 are characterised by their elongated legs and neck ; generally long beak ; the long 

 wing, with ten primary quills ; the plumed and elongated inner secondaries ; the 

 short, twelve-feathered tail ; and the elevation of the small first toe above the 

 level of the other three. In their skeleton they differ from all the preceding 

 families of this order, in that the nasal apertures of the skull are in the form of 

 long slits (schizorhinal) ; while they agree with the trumpeters in the absence of 

 any notch in the breast-bone, and also in the presence of a very large aperture on 

 the inner face of the lower end of the metacoracoid. Their cannon-bone resembles 

 that of the ducks (see figure on p. 324) and flamingoes, in that the fourth trochlea 

 is much shorter than the second a feature which at once distinguishes this bone 

 from the corresponding one of a heron or stork, in which the three trochlea are 

 subequal (see figure on p. 290) ; and they differ from the bustards in the V-shaped 

 furcula. In the presence of bare tracts, some distance up the neck, the cranes 

 approximate to the trumpeters and rails ; and they are further characterised by 

 the oil-gland being tufted. Their plumage undergoes a double annual moult. 



Cranes are now represented by about sixteen species, of which the greater 

 number are confined to the Old World, while there are none in South America, 

 Geologically, they are a somewhat ancient group, as remains referred to the 

 existing genus have been obtained from strata of Upper Eocene age. This 

 harmonises with the view of Mr. Beddard, by whom cranes are regarded as the 



