629 



DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT. 



PhALACROCORAX niLOPHUS. 

 PLATE CCLVIII. Vol. III. p. 420. 



Female. The mouth of this bird, and those of the other Cormo- 

 rants, differ from those of all the birds hitherto examined and de- 

 scribed in these volumes, in having the posterior aperture of the 

 nares placed much farther forward, commencing nearly opposite the 

 anterior angle of the eye, and in this species only 10 twelfths long, 

 with a very prominent ridge on each side, running backwards over the 

 hind part of the palate, which is flattened The width of the mouth 

 is 1 inch 4 twelfths ; but the lower jaw can be dilated to 2 inches, there 

 being a joint on each side at the base, as in Herons. The tongue is a 

 very diminutive ovato-lanceolate, thin, strongly carinate body, ^ inch 

 in length, 3 twelfths in its greatest breadth, with two basal knobs 

 placed close together. CEsophagus 16 inches long, at its commence- 

 ment 2 4 inches in width, afterwards 2 inches ; contracting to 1^ inch as 

 it enters the thorax, and again dilated into a sac 2| inches in width, a b, 

 which is directly continuous with the stomach, that organ seeming to 

 form its fundus. Its muscular fibres are very distinct, the external be- 

 ing transverse, the internal longitudinal ; the inner coat is thrown into 

 prominent longitudinal plicse. The stomach, bed, is of a roundish form, 

 2 inches 2 twelfths in diameter ; its muscular coat extremely thiuj being 

 reduced to a single series of slender muscular fibres ; the inner coat 

 quite smooth and soft, as is that of the pyloric lobe, d, which is ^ inch in 

 diameter. The proventricular glands, which are very numerous, form 

 a belt, of which the greatest breadth is 1 inch 9 twelfths, but at one 

 place only 1;^ inch. The lobes of the liver are extremely unequal, the 

 right being 4 inches, the left only 2 ; the gall-bladder 1 inch 9 twelfths in 

 length, oblong, 4 twelfths in breadth. The duodenum, d e/g, which is 3^ 

 twelfths in breadth, curves upwards at first to the length of 9 twelfths, 

 d e, then bends round the stomach, ascends on the left side to the upper 

 part of the proventriculus for the length of 6^ inches, retraces the same 

 course until it reaches the liver, then passes down the right side, and 



