Mr. Yarrell on the Trachea of Birds. 381 



notice of this new and interesting species should have been fur- 

 nished by a gentleman so eminently distinguished for his acquire- 

 ments as a naturalist and a scholar. Possessing as this bird does in 

 a great degree the external characters of the Demoiselle, it also 

 bears some resemblance to it in its anatomical structure. The 

 trachea, quitting the direction of the vertebrae of the neck at the 

 lower part, passes downward and backward between the branches 

 of the furcula till it reaches the anterior edge of the keel ; it then 

 turns upward into a groove formed for its reception, and beinu; 

 suddenl}^ retlected forward and downward, traverses the project- 

 ing portion of the sternum, and passes backward to the lungs, as 

 shown in the annexed representation. The furcula, it will be 

 observed, is similar to that of the Demoiselle. 



Dr. Latham's figure of the sternum and trachea of the Com- 

 mon Crane (Ardea Grus) being referred to, and compared widi 

 the same parts in the Demoiselle and the Stanley Crane, it will 

 be perceived, that the insertion of the windpipe in the latter bird 

 is upward, that of the Demoiselle principally backward, while 

 that of the Common Crane will be found to be a compound of 

 both, combining the upward inclination of the one with the 

 backward insertion of the other ; and the depth of this insertion 

 within the keel appears to depend on the age of the bird rather 

 than the sex. In a very old female, of which I prepared the 

 bones, the insertion is carried to the utmost extent that the size 

 of the sternum will admit. In a second specimen of a younger 

 male bird, the insertion was not so deep as in that last men- 

 tioned, but still much more so than in the sternum represented 

 by Dr. Latham : and in the valuable and extensive collection of 

 Joshua Brookes, Esq., to which that gentleman very kindly 

 allows me access, there is a skeleton of the Common Crane, — 

 evidently a young bird by the state of the bones, — in which the 

 insertion is not carried so far as in the representation alluded to ; 



but 



