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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SNIPE. 

 By F. J. Stubbs. 



(Concluded from p. 212.) 



It has been said by a high authority that the sternum, and 

 especially its hinder portion, must not be used for taxonomical 

 purposes, and it is a wise warning applied to those who seek to 

 learn the affinities of great groups of birds. But it is a manifest 

 error to ignore it in cases like the present one of these two 

 Snipe. For instance, if we assume that the two species belong 

 to the same genus, basing our opinions of their relationship on 

 the fact that their plumages and outlines have much in common 

 — in a word, that they are intimately related, and have pro- 

 gressed together since leaving the ancestral stem — what factors 

 caused the tremendous changes in the internal and (for all we 

 know to the contrary) useless elements of the hinder end of the 

 sternum ? If the birds are really related, and have kept their 

 plumages alike throughout thousands of generations, the internal 

 changes, carried out, too, without modifying the outward form, 

 must provide one of the most remarkable problems in the whole 

 field of zoology. The structural differences are not confined to 

 the bones : I refer particularly to the sternum, which, in the 

 Jack-Snipe, has/om- deep notches in the hinder margin, twice 

 the number of those in the larger bird. There are other points 

 of dissimilarity not so noticeable as those provided by the 

 notches, but I do not propose to treat of them here. Yet I 

 would draw attention to the syringes of the two birds, for they 

 differ to a very high degree. This organ of the Common Snipe 

 has been already figured by Wunderlich (* Nova Acta der Ksl. 

 Leop.-Car. Ak. Nat.' Bd. xlviii. No. 1) and erroneously described 

 by Gadow (Bronn's ' Thier-Reich,' and also Newton's ' Dictionary 

 of Birds'), who gives it two pairs of intrinsic syringeal muscles 

 — a particularly unfortunate error. Eeally, the bird has but a 

 single pair, in this agreeing with all other waders. I believe 



