GRUS VIRGO. 303 



I suspect that the bustard is a bird of passage, and only comes into 

 this country in the summer to breed ; and my reason for supposing so 

 is, that in the early and late summer months he cannot bear being out 

 all night ; as also he seems not to be able to bear the cold of a common 

 greenhouse in the winter. My cock bustard died in November, 

 although put into the greenhouse every night ; but this house had no 

 fire. On opening him there appeared no part to be diseased : he was 

 lean. 



The Numidian Crane [Grws Virgo, Cuv.]. 



This bird is larger in the body than our common heron, being con- 

 siderably thicker. Its flesh is red and excessively fat ; and, contrary to 

 most other birds, the fat is in the interstices of the muscles, as in most 

 animals, and is more solid than in other birds. It has the same smell 

 with the generality of birds that feed upon fish. Its legs are very long, 

 like those of the common heron, and the thighs are bare of feathers 

 for about three inches. Its toes are not nearly so long as in the 

 common heron ; the nails of the toes are short and thick. The back 

 claw is very short, scarcely having any nail upon it ; from which I 

 should suppose that it is not a bird that perched like the heron. The 

 colour of the legs is black, and instead of tendons they have bones, and 

 those divide into smaller ones in the body of a muscle: these bony 

 tendons are also in many other parts of the body. 



The bill of the animal is not so long as that of a bittern, nor is it so 

 sharp, yet the whole animal, when alive, appears to be of the heron 

 kind. It has no crop, nor does the oesophagus appear to be vastly 

 large. The gizzard is like that of the common fowls, but hardly so 

 red, strong, or firm. The duodenum makes the usual turn ; then the 

 other intestines make four turns upon themselves, something like the 

 duodenum ; the last of which makes another short turn upon itself ; 

 afterwards they are attached to the root of the mesentery and gizzard 

 as common ; and then pass down and terminate in the rectum, which 

 goes straight to the anus. The cseca are about 5 inches long; the 

 rectum becomes considerably larger about the anus. The female parts 

 of generation are as usual in fowls. There is a gall-bladder 1 ; the bile- 

 ducts pass into the duodenum near to the termination or last turn, pretty 

 near to one another. The pancreas I could not make anything of. All 

 the mesentery was so thick with fat that it was almost impossible to 

 see the intestines themselves. The trachea as it passes down the neck 



1 [In two of the Numidian demoiselles dissected by Duverney (Perrault's ' Me- 

 moires pour servir a l'Histoive Naturelle des Animaux,' 4to, 1699), the gall-bladder 

 was not found.] 



