﻿BIRDS OF PREY. CYMIND1S. 309 



(quelque analogie) with those birds on account of the 

 nakedness of its face and throat ; thus investing analogy 

 with the same meaning as affinity. Its whole struc- 

 ture, indeed, shows that it has very few of the raptorial 

 characters ; and we accordingly find, by the relation of 

 travellers, that it feeds as much upon fruits and seeds, 

 as upon insects and small reptiles. 



(250.) The types we have now retained in the Aqui- 

 line circle are four ; viz. Pandion, Harpyia, Aquila, and 

 Ibycter. Of these we consider the first to represent 

 the aquatic, or fissirostral, type ; the second and third 

 are the typical and sub-typical ; while every ornitholo- 

 gist must perceive in the relation we have just given of 

 Ibycter, that it is the representative of the gallinaceous 

 order, — in other words, the rasorial type ; while Astu- 

 rina, as before hinted, may possibly occupy the tenui- 

 rostral station. 



(251.) We enter the genus Cymindis, or the mil- 

 vine division, by means of Polyborus, a South Ame- 

 rican group, so closely allied to Ibycter that, until we 

 had personally examined and studied both, we were 

 led to believe they were only modifications of the 

 same subgenus.* There is a remarkable part of the 

 structure in Ibycter, which neither M. Vieillot, who 

 first proposed the genus, nor those who have followed 

 him, have taken any notice of. In all the preceding 

 types of this family we have examined, the hinder 

 toe (with its claw) is equal in length to that which is 

 the interior, or the difference is so very slight as scarcely 

 to deserve mention ; but in Ibycter this structure is 

 not seen : the hallux, or hind 

 toe (fig.102. a), is consider- 

 ably shorter than the other 

 (6) — a further proof of 

 this genus being the rasorial 

 type of the aquiline circle ; 

 for every ornithologist knows that this disproportion is 

 eminently conspicuous throughout the whole of the gal- 



* Zoological Illustrations, ii. pi. i. 



x 3 



