TEE DOVES. 



225 



the manubrium of the breast-bone, a thing of rare occur- 

 rence. 



In the tinamous of Central and South America the tail- 

 feathers are in some cases entirely wanting, and the breast- 

 bone and skull-bones have some anomalous features. Most 

 all gallinaceous birds have plump bodies, with short beaks 

 and small rounded wings, not being good fliers. In some 

 of their cranial characters they are so peculiar that Huxley 

 makes them one of his primary divisions of Carinatm. 



Order 7. ColumhcB (Doves, etc.). — We now come to birds 



Fia 266. -The Dodo. From Liitken's Zoology. 



of a higher type, in which the knee and part of the thigh 

 are free from the body, the leg being usually feathered down 

 to the tibio-tarsal joint; the toes are iisually on the same 

 level, being fitted'for grasping or perching. 



The doves are rapid fliers, but a notable exception is seen 

 in their extinct ally the Dodo [Didus ineptus. Fig. 266) of 

 Mauritius, which became extinct on the island of Mauritius 

 in the seventeenth century, while the solitaire, Didus (Pe- 



