SOME POINTS IN THE ANATOMY OF STEATORNIS. 183 
In the atlas the cup for articulation with the occipital condyle is 
incomplete behind; and the odontoid process of the axis is situated 
near its posterior margin. In this conformation, the classificational 
importance of which was first pointed out by Mr. Parker, Steatornis 
agrees with the Strigide and the Caprimulgide, but not with the 
‘Cypselide, in the one or two cases which I have had the opportunity 
of observing. 
The well-known peculiarities of the sternum do not seem to point 
definitely in any special direction; and in the other bones I have not 
observed any demonstrable tendencies. 
Digestive organs.—The tongue is thin, smooth, and triangular ; it is 
¢ inch broad at -its base, and 3 of an inch long; the posterior angles 
are prolonged backwards for ¢ of an inch as angular processes with 
small papille on them; the posterior border is simple. The esophagus 
is capacious and uniformly cylindrical, with longitudinal plications in 
‘its mucous membrane. The proventriculus is zonary and well deve- 
loped, the largest of its component glands, which are slightly racemose, 
being 3 of an inch long. The stomach forms a thin-walled, globose, 
capacious gizzard, with its mucous membrane, as usually, longitudi- 
nally plicated. The intestines are 22 inches long, capacious through- 
out, and especially so near the pyloric portion; the biliary and 
~ pancreatic ducts open into it 24 inches from the pylorus, at the bend 
of the duodenal loop. The two intestinal ceca are 14 and 12 inch 
long, slender, and a little broader at the cecal than at the open ends; 
they are situated 2 inches from the cloaca. 
The trachea is a little more capacious above than below. As in 
many birds, the separate rings of which it is composed are not so deep 
in the middle line as they are laterally ; and as in each ring the upper 
and lower margins of one side in one ring, and of the other side of the 
next above and below, are slightly everted, whilst those of the other 
half are inverted to the same extent, when the rings are superimposed 
they produce the appearance seen in the accompanying drawing, as if 
each ring were narrow on one side and broad on the other. The 
syringe (fig. 3, p. 184), as has been described by others, is extremely 
peculiar, because it is formed in each bronchial tube, instead of at the 
bifurcation of the trachea. The trachea bifurcates at its lower end 
much in the same way that it does in Mammalia; and each bronchus 
continues down towards the lungs as a cylindrical or slightly flat- 
tened tube, composed of simple and entire rings of cartilage. In a 
specimen that I once saw, there were fourteen of these rings on each 
side; but in the one before me, which is figured here, the bronchi are 
not equal in length, the left bronchus containing thirteen and the Page 532. 
right ten complete rings above the commencement of the syrinx. 
Each semisyrinx, as it may be termed, is formed on the same principle 
