32 
BIED GALLERY. 
side of the gallery are occupied by birds allied to the common 
Fowl, and by the wading and swimming birds ; among them 
being a fine series of Pheasants and other game birds, the Great 
Bustard, once an inhabitant of our island, a pair of Flamingoes 
with their nest, the Great Auk from the Northern Seas, now 
extinct, and the large Emperor Penguin from the Antarctic 
Ocean, the first specimens of which were obtained during the 
British Antarctic expedition of 1839-43. 
In the first two bays on the right side of the gallery are placed 
specimens of the peculiar division of birds called Ratitce, from 
the flat or raft-likc character of the breast-bone. Owing to 
the rudimentary character of their wings, these birds have not 
the power of raising themselves off the ground in flight. They 
include the largest existing birds, the Ostriches, Emus, and 
Cassowaries, as well as the small Kiwi or Apteryx of !N"ew 
Zealand, together with the extinct Moas of the same country, 
and the Eoc (^pyornis) of Madagascar. An egg of the 
latter is placed alongside eggs of the existing species of the 
group. 
Groups of Down the middle line of the gallery, as well as in many 
and N^sts!^^^ of the bays, are placed groups showing the nesting habits 
of the best-known British birds. The great value of these 
groups consists in their absolute truthfulness. The sur- 
roundings are not selected by chance or imagination, but 
in every case are carefully-executed reproductions of those that 
were present round the individual nest. When it has been 
possible, the actual rocks, trees, or grass, have been preserved, 
and where these were of a perishable nature they have been 
accurately modelled from nature. Great care has also been taken 
in preserving the natural form and characteristic attitude of the 
birds themselves. Among the more attractive cases are, near 
the centre of the gallery, a pair of Puffins, feeding their 
single young one, and Black-throated Divers, with their eggs 
in a hollow in the grass on the edge of a mountain-loch in 
Sutherland. Hen-harriers, the male grey and the female brown, 
with their nest among the heather from the moorland of the 
same county. A Peregrine Falcon's nest, on the ledge of a 
rocky cliff, containing three white downy nestlings. Various 
species of Ducks, especially the Ked-headed Pochard, on the 
