OF GALLINACEOUS BIRDS AND TINAMOUS. 197 
is not a differentiated type, but that it is a basal or general form; that it is below the 
Fowls and even the Grouse—birds so little elevated, on the whole, above the Ostriches. 
It also teaches that much of its divergence from the ‘‘Tetraonide” is towards the 
‘**Columbide ;”’ but not entirely, for the Plover comes in for its share of affinity. But 
the os hyoides teaches that the Grouse, the Pigeon, and the Plover do not exhaust the 
affinities of this paradoxical bird; it also shows that, whilst the bird is related to and 
yet below all these types, it also has within it a scarcely latent kinship to birds belonging 
to the most fully and best developed types. 
Putting together this corvine condition of the uro-hyal in the Syrrhaptes, of the pre- 
vomers in the Zulegalla, and of the vomer in the Hemipodius, and considering that all 
these three groups are groups of a more general and non-typical character than the 
Fowls proper—all these things, and many more which might be mentioned, indicate 
where the zoologist is to look for. the radical forms from which the great central 
branches of the bird-tree have sprung. Establish that point, and then we shall find our 
way to the syndactile and zygodactyle groups; for we have already under our eye 
corvine genera with no faint indications of relationship to those families. Such a bird 
is the Piping-Crow (Gymnorhina tibicen): the Coronica and the Vanga also both lead 
in the same direction. All these genera are from Australia, a country rich in gene- 
ralized forms. 
Already the writer has seen the true general or fundamental form of the ‘‘ Raptores:”’ 
it is the Dicholophus, and must have a certain grallatorial nature in it ; for such men as 
Geoffroy’ and Burmeister* have been wholly misled by its striking isomorphism with 
the terrestrial ‘‘ Grallatores.” I shall willingly spend and be spent in working out the 
details of facts of this kind; for let us once have a thorough knowledge of what is 
the positive truth in Nature, and then we shall be in a condition to appreciate the law 
underlying all these orderly and closely interwoven facts. 
To return to the Syrrhaptes, we find that, whilst the skull is as exquisitely polished 
and cellular as in the Pigeons, even the os quadratum and pterygoid being mere laby- 
rinthic air-cells, the skeleton generally is inferior to the Pigeons in this respect, and 
the degree of ossification is not so great. In the true Grouse, such as Lagopus, the 
whole shape and structure of the bird is very much after the fashion of the Pigeon, 
whilst the firm, majestic step of the typical walking-birds—the Cock, the Peacock, and 
the Turkey—is the result of an altogether stronger skeleton, with massive hinder limbs 
and pelvis ; but the steps are short, and the manner hurried, as in short, fat people, 
in the Grey Partridge and the Ptarmigan. In the Syrrhaptes this is all intensified, as 
all who have seen the living bird know. As a biped, it reminds me most of the qua- 
drupedal Armadillo in its movements, which are so quick, and yet have a rolling feeble- 
ness about them, whilst the large body hides the stunted legs by which it is carried. 
? Ann. d. Mus. d’H. N. xiii. p. 362. 
? Abh. d. naturf. Gesellsch. z. Halle, vol. i. p. 1 (1853), et Syst. Ueb. d. Th. Bras. iti. p. 400. 
