ILLUSTRATIONS OF FOREIGN OOLOGY. 
breeding season.* The Ostrich, however, also enacts something 
of the kind, as we have personally witnessed; seated on the whole 
length of his tarsi, he spreads out his plumage and displays his 
wings finely, at the same time oscillating his long neck from side 
to side, bringing the head nearly to the ground in a manner some- 
what Indicrous to behold. The little Rutis, too, present an analo- 
gous case among the undoubted Pressirostral grallatores. As 
regards the affinity of the Bustards to the Ostriches, the develop- 
ment of the rectum is one of the manifold tokens by which it may 
be traced.} But we must not overlook the difference in the charac- 
ter of the eggs and of the number laid; though as several female 
Osiriches are known to lay in the same nest, we are not aware 
that it has been quite satisfactorily ascertained how many are pro- 
duced by each individual. 
The geographical focus of the Bustard is Africa, and we believe 
that the only wholly extra African species are the four of India 
and the single Australian species, which to judge from Mr. Gould’s 
representation of it, would appear to differ yery little indeed from 
the Large Indian Bustard.t There is none in either America nor in 
all South-castern Asia and its islands; not even in China (so far as 
hitherto observed);§ and the O. luzoniensis, founded on Sonnerat’s 
Paon sauvage de lugon, is identified by Mr. G. R. Gray, with 
O. edwardii (vel. nigriceps) of India, and is extremely doubtful 
as an inhabitant of the Philippines. But should it really prove 
to exist there, and at the same time to be identical with the Great 
* Mr, Elliot thus writes of the large Indian species: —“ October 12th, killed a 
large Cock Bustard. ‘When first seen, he was making a curious noise, like a person 
in pain moaning, which was heard at a considerable distance, I at first thought it 
proceeded from some one in distress, and rode towards the spot under that impression 
until I saw the Bustard. He was strutting about on some high ground, ruffling his 
wings and distending his neck and throat, making the feathers stand out like a ruff. 
I frequently afterwards heard the moaning, always at the same season 3° Madr. 
Journ. xii, 8. Vide also Mr. Hodgson’s Account of the Bengal Floriken, in JA. S. B. 
xvi. 885. 
+ Vide Todd’s Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology, Art. Aves, by Prof, Owen. 
} Referring to M. Alfred Malherbe’s * Catalogue Raisonné d’Oiseaux de l’ Algerie,” 
we find that he only inelndes the Tetraa campestris, Whereas we should have looked 
at least for the Houbara in that province, 
§ If found in China, so striking a bird as any species of Bustard would surely 
be depicted in the collections of drawings of Chinese birds by native artists, and of 
which the species may generally be recognized with facility. We have several 
times thus seen a magnificent undescribed species of Bonasa or Rufiled Grouse 
represented in these drawings. 
AL 
