1916] Chandler: Structure of Feathers 331 



imately equal size. The long barbicelled pennulum is without 

 pigment, resulting in the hoary appearance above mentioned. The 

 breast feathers have a much simplified type of barbules, with a 

 series of booklets and curved ventral cilia which grade into each 

 other and are all subequal in size. The pigment is distributed in 

 well-defined transverse bars. The down barbules, unlike those of 

 the Anseres, are long, 2 mm. or more, being almost simple threads, 

 a few inconspicuous prongs being developed at the nodes. 



/ As will be seen from the above, the Palamedeae are peculiar in 

 that they combine the characters of a number of other groups of 

 birds in a confusing manner and could not readily be associated 

 with any group on the basis of their feather structure. The distal 

 barbules of the remiges resemble those of the Anseres in number 

 and form of the pennular barbicels, but the ventral teeth are most 

 closely paralleled by the Meleagridae; proximals of the remiges 

 combine anserine, ciconiid, and galline characters ; the barbules of 

 the breast feathers constitute a type of their own, probably de- 

 generated; and finally the down barbules are long and threadlike, 

 unlike either Anseres or Galli, but near the Ciconiidae. 



6. Order FALCONIFORMES 

 Plates 22, 23 

 The Falconiformes include a rather well-defined group divisible 

 into three distinct suborders, which, as in the case of Anseriformes 

 and Ciconiiformes, can more readily be treated separately. As an 

 entire group they show unmistakable evidence of being derived 

 from a parent stock somewhere intermediate between the Stegano- 

 podes and Ciconiae. In the entire order the plumules are uniformly 

 distributed, powder down is present in a few, and the aftershaft is 

 present in all but the Cathartae, which, however, seem otherwise to 

 be the lowest in the evolutionary scale. 



I. Suborder Cathartae 

 PI. 22, Fig. 34 



a) Gyninogyps calif ornianus 

 (1) Remiges 



Barbs moderately broad, but very heavily built, pith of rami 

 more than one cell in thickness. Barbules large, the distals larger 

 than usual relative to proximals. Fewer barbules per unit of 



