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XXII. On the Struthious Birds living in the Society’s Menagerie. By Puitir Luriey 
Scrater, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., &c., Secretary to the Society. 
Read April 24 and May 8, 1860. 
[Prares LXVII. a.—LXXVI.] 
THE collection of Struthious birds now living in the Society’s Gardens is by far the 
finest and the largest ever yet brought together, embracing, as it does, examples not only 
of all the older known members of the group, but likewise of several others, which appear 
to be new and hitherto undescribed species or varieties of these birds. The able pencil 
of Mr. Wolf has produced a series of beautiful sketches of these birds, from which 
the accompanying illustrations have been chiefly drawn on stone by Mr. J. Jury. The 
occasion seems favourable for attempting to give a general résumé of the present state 
of our knowledge of the species of this interesting family, which was until lately sup- 
posed to consist only of four or five recent representatives, but has received within these 
last few years so remarkable an addition to its number of known species. 
The Order Struthiones, or Cursores as it is also called, embraces those birds which, 
not requiring their wings for purposes of flight or for movement in the water, have the 
sternum unprovided with the normal crest which usually serves for the attachment of 
the pectoral muscles. In this and other points of their osteology and anatomy, they 
are so different from the more typical birds, that more than one authority has divided 
the class ‘‘Aves” into two great divisions—one of them containing only the Struthiones, 
and the other all the remainder of the class of Birds’. 
Though the members of the Order Struthiones now existing on the earth’s surface are 
but few in number, we have good reason to believe that at a comparatively recent geo- 
logical epoch they were, in some localities, numerous. Treating, however, at pre- 
sent only of the recent species, we find them constituting two very distinct groups 
or families. The first of these, the Struthionide or Ostriches, embraces the largest and 
in some respects the most Mammal-like of the whole class of Birds; in the other, 
the Apterygide or Kiwis, the species are of small size, and present, in some respects, 
almost Reptilian characters. The Order Struthiones thus embraces two of the most 
abnormal types of the whole Class, which are nevertheless allied by unmistakeable 
characters into one group. 
The following table will serve to show some of the more noticeable characters by 
’ Merrem, who calls these divisions Aves carinate and Aves ratite, and De Blainville, who applies to them the 
terms Tropidosterniens and Homalosterniens (‘Organisation du Régne Animal’). Nitzsch, in his treatise on the 
Carotid Artery of Birds, places this order at the end of his system, under the name Platysterne. 
VOL. IV,— PART VIII. 3D 
