THE ALECTORIDES. 121 



1. ALECTORIDES. 



To this group I refer the genera Palamedea, Otis, Dicholophus, Psophia and Grus, but I 

 cannot give any special pterylographic character for them, although several of them present 

 very definite and, indeed, quite peculiar conditions. 



A. With broad tract-bands or writh uninterrupted plumage. 



1. Palamedea. This genus constitutes a very good pterylographic transition from the Cur- 

 sorial to the Wading Birds, inasmuch as in certain characters its pterylosis approximates to each of 

 these groups. It presents the following characters : In P. chavaria the contour-feathers have a 

 very weak, scarcely perceptible, after-shaft, which is rather more distinct only on the feathers of 

 the nape, and is entirely wanting in P. cornuta. The latter species also wants the ordinary 

 longitudinal furrow on the lower surface of the shaft, which is flat on both sides ; this furrow 

 occurs in P. chavaria. The plumage is, moreover, nearly uninterrupted and pretty uniformly 

 sparse, and consists of down- and contour-feathers intermixed. In the region of the axillary tracts 

 I remarked a closer approximation and stronger structure of the contour-feathers, and a similar 

 character occurs at the margin of the breast, where we should expect to find the outer branch of 

 the inferior tract. Between the two more densely feathered spots, and therefore exactly in the 

 axillary cavity, there is also the only merely downy space that I could discover. It is, however, 

 produced somewhat downwards on the sides of the trunk, and terminates in the femoral region. 

 Besides this space there is also in P. chavaria the perfectly naked and featherless neck-ring ; 

 but this is wanting in P. cornuta. I found twenty-seven remiges, of which the first is equal to 

 the ninth, and the second to the sixth, and the three between the latter gradually become some- 

 what longer, so that the fifth is certainly the longest, but only exceeds the fourth by a little. The 

 tail contains twelve feathers, and the feathered oil-gland has a circlet of feathers on the mamilla. 1 

 In the skin itself I was struck by its emphysematic nature in several places, for example, on the 

 ventral surface. 



2. Otis (Plate VIII, figs. 1 and 2). No down-feathers among the contour- feathers, but. 

 somewhat scattered ones on the spaces, most distinctly on the lateral space of the trunk and the 



1 Of this extremely peculiar genus of Birds I have been able to examine only the bones of the 

 limbs which I found in the Museum at Munich (there were no anatomical preparations of Palamedea 

 in the Museums of Berlin, Leyden, Paris, and Vienna, at the time of my visits to those places). By 

 this examination I ascertained at least that these bones are pneumatic to their very extremities, a pecu- 

 liarity which, as far as I know, occurs elsewhere only in Buceros (see Naumann's ' Naturgesch. der Vogel 

 Deutschl.,' Bd. ix, p. 225). The two wing-spurs cover two conical tubercles, of which the larger 

 originates at the base and the smaller at the apex of the os metacarpi digiti medii seu maximi. At the 

 apex of the second joint of the same finger there is also the trace of a similar tubercle. As to the true 

 affinities of this genus of Birds, I am, however, still in doubt, and place, it here only provisionally ; it 

 appears to belong to the Fulicarice. 



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