1899.] IJfTEEN'AL ANATOMY OF NOTOENIS. 89 



perfectly fresh condition, and I at once proceeded to examine those 

 parts of the viscera which might have interest to the systematist. 

 As I am not an " ornithologist," and have but little experience in 

 the subject of avian anatomy, it may be that I have omitted to 

 note some special points of importance : for such omissions I must 

 apologize ; and as the viscera have been preserved, it may be 

 possible to rectify the omissions at some future time. 



The bird was a young female, in which the ovary was very small, 

 none of the eggs being more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter. 

 This fact is of itself of some interest to naturalists, for the sex of 

 the previous specimens had not beea determined ; and the colora- 

 tion of this specimen is so similar to that of the skin in the Dresden 

 Museum that there can be no doubt but that it, too, was a female, 

 as also is one of the skins in the British Museum ; the other skin 

 appears from BuUer's account to be of brighter plumage, and is 

 presumed by him to be a male. 



A full account of the colour of Notornis, as well as of the history 

 of the previous specimeus, will be found in Sir Walter Buller's 

 ' History of the Birds of New Zealand ' ; and an account of the 

 history of this fourth specimen and the external appearance of this 

 fourth skin was read by me at the meeting of the Otago Institute 

 in September, and will be published in the ' Transactions of the 

 New Zealand Institute ' for the current year. In the present 

 paper I confine myself to facts of internal anatomy. The viscera 

 to which I directed my attention were : («) the alimentary tract, 

 (6) the tongue, (c) the larynx, (fZ) the syrinx. Of all these struc- 

 tures I have made careful measurements and drawings, some of 

 which accompany this paper. 



(a) The Alimentary Tract. — The oesophagus and glandular stomach 

 present no feature of special interest ; the gizzard, of the type usual 

 in graminivorous birds, is of large size, measuring 3| inches by 2^ 

 inches (the length of the entire bird from the tip of the beak to 

 the tip of the rectrices is 23 inches). The intestine is 48 inches 

 in length from the pylorus up to the cloaca. 



The duodenum is | inch across, and this loop measures 5| inches. 

 The intestine is thrown into a few major folds, which are shown 

 in fig. 1 (p. 90). Unfortunately the mesentery had been slightly 

 injured by the taxidermist in removing the viscera, but I believe that 

 the figure is a true representation of the convolutions. I need not 

 describe them in detail, as the figure is sufficiently explicit, and 

 I leave ornithologists to determine the systematic value of the 

 arrangement of these coils, which appear to agree closely with 

 the scheme given by Mitchell for the Kails \ 



The remains of the vitelline duct {v) is g an inch in length, and 

 arises just 24 inches from the pylorus, that is halfway along the 

 length of the intestine. 



The paired, caeca are of large size : they arise (c) about 6 inches 

 from the posterior end of the gut, and each measures 9 inches in 

 length. It is at first much narrower than the intestine, and this 

 ' Mitchell, Proo. Zool. Soc. 1896, p. 49. 



