1886.] ON THE TRACHEA AND SYRINX IN CERTAIN BIRDS. 321 
1. Notes on the Convoluted Trachea of aCurassow (Nothocrax 
urumutum), and on the Syrinx in certain Storks. By 
Frank E. Bepparp, M.A., F.R.S.E., Prosector to the 
Society. 
[Received June 1, 1886.] 
My predecessor in the office of Prosector to this Society, Mr. W. 
A. Forbes, has summed up all the facts that are known with respect to 
the convoluted trachea of Birds in a communication published in the 
‘Proceedings’ for 1882(p.347)'. The present note is a supplement to 
that paper, and deals with the couvolute! trachea of the male Notho- 
erax urumutum. Among the Cracide it is the rule fur the males to 
have a convoluted trachea, while it is very unusual for the female to 
resemble the male in this respect ; in every case when present the 
trachea makes a single loop on the right side of the carina sterni— 
sometimes very short, as in Crax globicera; sometimes of great 
length, as in Pauxis galeata, where the loop bends up on the right 
side of the carina, terminating near to its upper margin. In 
Nothocrax urumutum the male has a trachea which makes a single 
loop extending to the end of the carina sterni, as shown in the 
accompanying drawing (fig. 1, p. 322); the female, as Mr. Forbes 
has already pointed out, has a simple trachea. 
On a Peculiarity in the Syrinx of Xenorhynchus and Abdimia. 
The Order Herodiones appears to be separable into two very 
distinct families—the Ardeidz and the Ciconiidz, which differ from 
each other in certain anatomical peculiarities ; thus the ambiens is 
always absent in the former, and generally, though not always, 
present in the latter; the pectoral muscle is separable into two 
distinct portions in the Storks, while in the Herons it is only incom- 
pletely separated by a tendinous band. Another well-marked differ- 
ence is to be found in the structure of the syrinx. 
In the Storks* there are no intrinsie muscles; the lowest rings of 
the trachea are very slender and cartilaginous, often incomplete ; 
and the occasional presence of an upwardly projecting bony piece 
from the lateral portions of the last three tracheal rings gives to the 
syrinx an appearance not at all unlike that of the Tracheophonine 
Passeres. The bronchi are particularly long, “the bifurcation of the 
trachea occurring at, or even a little above, the superior aperture of 
the thorax ’’*®; the membrane which unites the two bronchi—which 
was termed by Garrod the bronchidesmus '—is complete in the Storks, 
that is to say, it commences from the very point where the bronchi 
diverge ; the rings which make up the bronchi themselves are quite 
continuous, as in the Cathartidee, Ostrich, &e. 
1 Forbes’s Collected Papers, p. 338. 
? Garrod’s Collected Papers, p. 669. 
3 Loe, cit. p. 284. * Loe. cit. p, 479. 
