AXATOMY OF THE SHOE-BILL. 655 



pancreas. On referring to my own notes, I find that a closely 

 similar arrangement occurs in a very large number of birds 

 belonging to widely separated groups. 



Intestinal Tract. — The most notable general feature of the 

 alimentary canal is the extremely small bulk it occupied in the 

 body compared with the size of the bird. The actual specimen 

 stood nearly four feet high ; when the alimentai-y tract and 

 inesentery had been removed by cutting the duodenum close to 

 the stomach and the rectum close to the cloaca, the little handful 

 of viscera placed on the dissecting board was not so large as the 

 similar mass from a duck. The calibre of the whole tract was 

 narrow and fairly uniform, except that the caecum and large 

 intestine were rather wider. The aperture leading from the 

 stomach {i. e., from the pyloric chamber of the stomach) to the 

 duodenum was excessively small (text-fig. 121, A, p. 653); a 

 grain of millet would have had difiiculty in passing through. The 

 minuteness of this aperture is no doubt an adaptation similar- in 

 purpose to the hair-like brush found by Garrod in Plotus anhinga 

 and the similarly placed plug found by the same anatomist in 

 Levaillant's Darter (Garrod, 19 and 20), which he surmised to be 

 devices for preventing the passage of fish-bones into the gut. 



The minuteness of the exit from the stomach and still more 

 the further guarding of the aperture by a plug of hair-like 

 structures may have another advantage than prevention of the 

 passage of fish-bones. The hair-plug occurs also in the Turkey- 

 buzzard {Cathartes aura), which is certainly not a habitual fish- 

 eater. In his "Last Journal" (12) under the date Aug. 20, 

 Forbes mentions dissecting an example of Plotus levaillanti and 

 finding the stomach full of nematodes, none of which, however, 

 had penetrated beyond the plug, although several had been caught 

 in it. I found a number of nematodes in the stomach of my 

 specimen of Balceniceps. We know now that intestinal parasites 

 may do much damage to the animals they infest, and it is 

 possible that the plug of hairs in the Darters and the very small 

 exit from the stomach in Balcenicejjs, serve the useful purpose of 

 preventing nematodes, which have been eaten with the food, 

 from entering the intestines, keeping them in the stomach where 

 they may eventually be killed. 



The aperture by which the distal end of the small intestine 

 communicates with the caecum and large intestine (text-fig. 123, B, 

 p. 658) is only just a little larger than the opening into the duo- 

 denum. The structure of the alimentary tract shows that the 

 Shoe-bill is adapted to make the most of a limited diet, consist- 

 ing probably entirely of animal food, fish, frogs, or even small 

 m.ammals ; that the food must be retained for a considerable time in 

 the stomach until it is very well macerated, for large lumps could 

 neither enter the intestines from the stomach, nor even if they 

 reached the intestines leave them by passing into the caecum and 

 large intestines. From much unpleasant expei^ience in dissecting 

 the alimentary tract of birds and mammals^ I have learned to 



