480 DR. J. MURIE ON THE DERMAL AND VISCERAL STRUCTURES 
remark that his figures (2 and 3, p. 133, P. Z. S. 1861), though somewhat diagrammatic, 
are quite characteristic of the shape and position of the patches on the body of the 
bird. 
I shall give my own notes on the subject, specially to show what the powder-downs 
in Cancroma are equivalent to compared with those of Rhinochetus. 
There are two clavicular or sternally placed, elongated, oblique, thick patches; each 
is 1-4 inch long diameter and half an inch broad. The base of these is light-coloured. 
They appear to be representative of the furcular portions of the coracoid patches of 
the Kagu, or more possibly the segregated segments of the pectoral portion of the 
lateral sterno-ventral patches in that bird. 
Another pair of patches, 1:7 inch long and but a quarter of an inch in breadth, lie 
parallel to each other, but apart, on the hinder surface of the abdomen. These unques- 
tionably are the gastric parts of the lateral sterno-ventral patches. It would seem, 
therefore, that in Cancroma, with a wide middle interruption, the last-mentioned 
remarkable belly-strips of Rhinochetus are demonstrable. 
The third pair are very small indeed, being composed of not many more than a dozen 
plumes each; and they are placed on the back, towards the posterior extremity of the 
scapula. I homologize these with the scapular portion of the Kagu’s dorsal powder- 
down patches. 
The fourth and last pair, as Bartlett has truly rendered, but not so Nitzsch, are 
V-shaped, the apex hindermost. 
The upper limb is widest, and lies upon the ilium; the lower outer narrower limb 
runs forwards along the posterior border of the gluteal region or towards the femoral 
region. Now of this pair of powder-downs I am inclined to regard the diverging forks 
as identical with the femoral patches, and the inner broad bands as the combined ilio- 
lumbar portions of the dorsal patches of the Kagu and Sun-bittern. Thus, like the 
belly, the back of the Boatbill has a broad interrupted space completely dividing what 
is one long dorsal strip of powder-patch in the two other avine forms. 
The head and neck in Cancroma are void of any thing that I could recognize as 
powder-downs. Scattered on the wings and body there are traces of under down, but 
no powder-bearing plumes; even the down does not obtain in such quantity as in the 
common Heron. ‘Those solitary hair-like feathers (filo-plumes, Nitzsch) seen abun- 
dantly in the Heron, are very few in number in the Boatbill, and what there are 
chiefly occupy the head. 
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the roots of the powder-down patches, as 
in the Heron, are straw-coloured, and the plumes themselves pure white. 
The Trumpeter (Psophia), placed on a level with Rhinochetus and Eurypyga by 
Parker, as ‘“‘intimately related, inter se, and very closely also to the Cranes and 
Herons,” offers a trenchant difference from the said genera in being devoid of powder- 
patches. The down-feathers, which, in the Kagu and Sun-bittern seem partially trans- 
