OSTEOLOGY OF BIRDS 



345 



OSTEOLOGY OF COCCYSTES GLANDARIUS 



A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NEW AND OLD WORLD COCCYGES 



At the time I published my memoir on " The Osteology of the 

 Cuckoos [Coccyges]," in the Proceedings of the American Philo- 

 sophical Society [1901. v. 40] skeletons representing the genera 

 Cuculus and Coccystes were not at hand, there being no such ma- 

 terial in my private collections or in the collections at the United 

 States National Museum. Shortly after my paper appeared, how- 

 ever, Dr E. Regalia of Florence, Italy, kindly noted my needs in 

 that direction and was so good as to supply the necessary desiderata 

 from his own private cabinets. In April 1902, he sent me skeletons 

 in the rough of Cuculus canorus and Coccystes glan- 

 darius, the first named species being that of an adult male in- 

 dividual collected at Anti-Liban, Syria [no. 1 135] , and the second, 

 also an adult (sex ?) having been taken at Beirut, Syria [no. 

 1263]. When this material was received, my time was too much 

 occupied with other work to allow me to bestow upon it the at- 

 tention it deserved, though I did prepare the skeletons for proper 

 examination and description. In the first part of my above-cited 

 memoir I presented the titles and authors of the principal papers 

 that had appeared upon the anatomy of the Coccyges, so it will be 

 unnecessary to reproduce here that part of my subject. Moreover, 

 as the characters in the skeleton of the common Cuckoo of Europe 

 are more or less known, they will only be incidently referred to in 

 trie present connection, the chief attention being given to the 

 osteology of Coccystes which will furnish a description not hereto- 

 fore published. This is made possible entirely through the donation 

 of Dr Regalia to whom my thanks are extended for the courtesy he 

 has thus shown. 



In my scheme of classification of Aves the Coccygiformes con- 

 taining the cuckoos stands as supersuborder 31, falling between the 

 Trogoni formes (supersuborder 30) and the Coliformes (supersub- 

 order 32), the Coccygiformes containing the suborder (50) Muso- 

 phagi (family, Musophagidae) and the suborder Coccyges (51), 

 containing the family Cuculidae, and so far as my studies and read- 

 ing have carried me since that classification was published I find 

 no reason for making any changes in it. 1 According to Dr Sharpe 

 the order Coccyges (31) is placed between the order Trogones (30) 



Shufeldt, R. W. An Arrangement of the Families and the Higher Groups of Birds. 

 Nat. Nov. -Dec. 1904. Boston 1904. v. 38, nos. 455-56, p. 833-57. 



