STUDIES or THE MACEOCHIRES. 



307 



each side of the neck ; these conDect the humeral tracts with 

 the feathering of the head. 



Otherwise both the dorsal and ventral tracts of the Cedar- 

 bird agree very well with the details of this important character 

 as seen in such a Passerine form, e. g., as Motacilla alba. This 

 fact may be better appreciated by comparing my drawings of 

 the former (PI. XVII. fig. la & h) with Nitzsch's figures of the 

 pterylosis of the latter *. 



12. The oil-gland is found to be nude, and this gland has a 

 form such as is assumed among the great majority of the 

 Passeres. 



Upon removing the integument, one of the most convenient 

 anatomical points to be first examined is the method of insertion 

 of the muscles of the patagium. In the case of a small bird such 

 as we have in Ampelis, our present subject, I find an easy way to 

 do this is to seize the elbow of the plucked pectoral limb with 

 the thumb and index finger of the left hand, in such a manner 

 that the palmar surface of the index finger is applied to the 

 under surface of the patagium, and keeps it on the stretch. The 

 thumb is opposed to tbis, and firmly holds the elbow-joint, and 

 no more. We now make an incision, with the scalpel in our 

 right hand, through the skin, down the line of the triceps muscle, 

 and another at right angles to it, along the line of the ulna : 

 then carefully dissecting back the triangular flap of integument 

 thus outlined, the parts to be examined come nicely into 

 view. 



13. In Ampelis the insertion of the tensor patagii longtis ixndi 

 hrevis are typically Passerine in character, as may be seen in the 

 drawing here presented of these parts, wbich I made directly from 

 my dissection (PI. XYII. fig. 2), and from Prof Garrod's excellent 

 description, in his memoir upon the anatomy of the groupt, of this 

 method of insertion, as we find it in nearly all Passeres. 



In A. cedroi^um, however, we find another patagial muscle 

 present in all Passeres which I have examined, which else- 

 where I have named the dermo-tensor patagii, marking it dt.^). in 



* Nitzsch's * Pterjlography : ' translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, 

 and edited by P. L. Sclater, for the Eay Society. London, 18G7 : Taf. iii. 

 ligs. 1 & 2. 



t Garrod, A. H., " On some Anatomical Characters which bear upon the 

 Major Divisions of the Passerine Birds," P. Z. S. 187G, pp. 506-519 (read 

 June Gth, 1876). 



