Genus— S C^OPHiETHON. 
Sc^OPH^THON Mathews, Austral Avian Record, 
Vol. II., p. 56, 1913 . . . . . . . . Type S. westralis. 
Phoenicurus Bonaparte, Comptes Rendus Sci. (Paris), 
Vol. XLL, p. 1115, 1856 .. .. .. Type S. rubricattda. 
(Not Phoenicurus Forster 1817.) 
Labge Phsethontid birds, with short deep, laterally compressed, not hooked, 
bills, long wings, short tails with extraordinary elongated central pair of 
tail-feathers, short legs and feet, the four toes connected with a web. 
The bill is longer than the head, not hooked, but the culmen arched, 
deep, much laterally compressed, the edges of both mandibles coarsely 
serrated. The nostrils are open linear slits placed high up near the base of 
the culmen, the feathering running back from the nostrils to the gape at a 
very acute angle ; the gape is wide ; the rami of the lower mandible are 
thick, placed close together, enclosing a very narrow feathered tract, and 
fusing at two-thirds the length of the mandible ; the culmen chord is twice 
the length of the metatarsus. The wing is long with the first primary 
longest. 
The tail is short, slightly wedge-shaped, composed of sixteen feathers, 
the central pair very much elongated, the webs very much diminished : this 
pair are about six times the length of the culmen, while the second pair are 
less than twice its length, \ 
The legs are short and thick, the toes short and rough. The metatarsus 
is less than half the length of the culmen and is covered with hexagonal 
roughened scutes, the scutes much smaller at the back. The toes are all 
connected with webs, but are nothing like the feet of any other Steganopod. 
That is, the middle toe is longest, the outer toe longer than the inner, while 
the hind toe is very small and i3laced posteriorly. The scaling of the toes 
consists of regular scutes. 
In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, Vol. XXVI., 1898, 
p. 450, the family Phccthontidce is recognised, covering one genus Phoethon. 
Six species are admitted, no subspecies being indicated. The family had 
291 
