ROSEATE SPOONBILL. 



79 



more muscular. The intestines are thicker and more muscular than those of 

 Herons, and differ more especially in having two coecal appendages, which 

 however are extremely short, whereas the Herons have merely a single 

 ccecal prominence. 



The heart, g, is remarkably large, 

 being 1 inch and 10 twelfths long, 1 

 inch and a half in breadth. The lobes 

 of the liver, h, i, are very large, and 

 about equal, their greatest length 

 being 3 inches; the gall-bladder globu- 

 lar, 8 twelfths in diameter. One of 

 the testes is 1 1 twelfths long, 9 twelfths 

 broad; the other 10 twelfths by 7 

 twelfths; their great size being ac- 

 counted for by the individual's having 

 been killed in the breeding season. 



In a female of much smaller size 

 the oesophagus is 15 inches long; the 

 stomach 2 inches. in length, 1 inch 

 and 9 twelfths broad; the intestine 7 

 feet 7 inches. The contents of the 

 stomach, fishes, shrimps, and frag- 

 ments of shells. 



One of the most remarkable devia- 

 tions from ordinary forms in this bird 

 is the division of the trachea pre- 



vious to its entering the thorax. 



It 



may be described as very short, a little 

 flattened, and quite membranous, the 

 rings being cartilaginous and very 

 thin. Its diameter at the top is 5 



twelfths, and it is scarcely less at the lower part, where, half-way down the 

 neck, is formed an inferior larynx, k, which is scarcely enlarged. The two 

 bronchi Im, I m, are in consequence excessively elongated. They are 

 compressed, 5 twelfths in diameter at the commencement, gradually con- 

 tracting to 3 twelfths, and enlarging a little towards the end; and are 

 singular in this respect that the rings of the upper fourth are incomplete, the 

 tube being completed by membrane in the usual manner, whereas in the 

 rest of their extent, the rings are elliptical, entire, stronger, and those at the 

 lower part united or anchylosed on the inner side. The rings of the trachea 

 are 105, of the two bronchi 73 and 71. The contractor muscles are feeble 



