316 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



with the Waders, to remove it to the end of that order, 

 thus placing it in immediate apposition with the Swim- 

 ming Birds, with some of which he could not fail to 

 perceive that it evinced a manifest aflinity. 



On the authority of Dr. Latham, (for the bird itself 

 was not for a long time known to exist in any other 

 collection than that of the British Museum,) the orni- 

 thologists of the Continent continued to class the New 

 Holland Cereopsis in the Wading Order, until M. Tem- 

 minck figured it, about the year 1824, in his Planches 

 Coloriees, observing that he placed it at the head of 

 the Swimming Birds, with which its external form 

 appeared to associate it. Another figure was soon 

 after given by M. Vieillot, in his Galerie des Oiseaux, 

 with the observation that he also had been induced to 

 arrange it with the Swimming Birds, on account of the 

 close affinity which its entire structure presented with 

 that of the Geese. And subsequently M. Cuvier, who 

 appears to have overlooked it entirely in the first 

 edition of his Regne Animal, has, in the second edition 

 of that work, arranged it close beside the Geese, as a 

 simple subdivision of the genus Anas. There can be 

 no doubt, from the observation of the living birds, that 

 this is its proper place in nature. It has, however, a 

 great affinity to the Wading Birds, which is shown by 

 the nakedness of the legs above the joint and by the 

 incomplete palmation of the feet, as well as by some 

 particulars of its anatomy. 



The characters which distinguish this bird from the 

 Geese are not very important, but they are well marked 

 and embrace striking modifications of various organs. 

 They consist chiefly in the form of the bill, the naked 

 part of which is extremely short, and forms a kind of 

 broad truncated hook ; in the very great breadth of the 

 cere, which leaves but a small portion of the bill unco- 

 vered, and extends backwards to about half the distance 



