﻿EXTERNAL ANATOMY. BILL. 



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culmen, or ridge of the upper, is perfectly straight. The 

 same also may be said of several of the long-billed waders, 

 which at present form part of the genus Totanus, so 

 that it is in the Avocets alone (Jig. 36. a.) we have this 

 form at its maximum : here both the mandibles towards 

 their extremity make a sudden curve upwards, and 

 although very thin and delicate at this part, they are 

 considerably compressed. The recurved-bill humming 

 birds, of which there now appears more than one species, 

 possess the same structure, with this exception only, 

 that the gonysis somewhat 

 thickened. For several years 

 after we had published a 

 figure and description of 

 the Trochilus recurviros- 

 tris (fig.36.b.), the French 

 ornithologists, with their 

 usual hastiness of decision, 

 maintained that the upward direction of the bill merely 

 originated in that part having been artificially distorted 

 in the only specimen then existing of the species. We 

 did not think it worth while to combat this assertion, 

 fully persuaded that, as soon as these gentlemen could 

 receive ocular demonstration by an inspection of a se- 

 cond example, they would change their opinion ; and 

 they have accordingly done so. Several specimens within 

 the last few years have reached Paris, and it now appears 

 that more than one species has the bill decidedly re- 

 curved. Nothing is positively known of those peculiar 

 habits which require a bill shaped so differently from all 

 other birds. Wilson, in speaking of the American 

 Avocet (Recurvirostra Americana), merely observes, 

 that it " frequents the shallow pools of water in the salt 

 marshes, wading about, often to the belly, in search of 

 food; viz. marine worms, snails (?), and various insects 

 (crabs ?) that abound among the soft muddy bottoms of 

 the pools/' 



(67.) VI. Truncated bills are, perhaps, the most 

 singular of all the forms which nature has given to this 

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