40 
WHOOPING CRANE. 
middle by a broad and strong membrane, and each bordered 
with a rough warty edge ; the soles of the feet are defended 
from the hard sand and shells by a remarkably thick and cal- 
lous warty skin. 
On opening these birds, the smallest of the three was found 
to be a male ; the gullet widened into a kind of crop ; the 
stomach, or gizzard, contained fragments of shell-fish, pieces 
of crabs, and of the great king crab, with some dark brown 
marine insects. The flesh was remarkably firm and muscular, 
the skull, thick and strong, intended, no doubt, as in the 
woodpecker tribe, for the security of the brain from the vio- 
lent concussions it might receive while the bird was engaged 
in digging. The female and young birds have the back and 
scapulars of a sooty brownish olive. 
This species is found as far south as Cayenne and Surinam. 
Dampier met with it on the coast of New Holland ; the Bri- 
tish circumnavigators also saw it on Van Diemen’s Land, Terra 
del Fuego, and New Zealand. 
WHOOPING CRANE— ARDEA AMERICANA. 
Plate LXIV. Fig. 3. Male. 
Arct. Zool. No. 339. — Cateshy, i. lb,-— Lath. iil. p. 42. — La Grue d’Amerique, 
PI. Enl. 889.— PeaZe’s Museum^ No. 3704. 
GRUS AMERICANA.— T^miiscK.* 
Grus Americana, JBonap. Synop. p. 302. — North. Zool. ii. p. 372. 
This is the tallest and most stately species of all the feather- 
ed tribes of the United States ,* the watchful inhabitant of ex- 
* This crane has also suffered under the too general confusion of names, so 
that it becomes somewhat difficult to determine with precision that which should 
by priority be allotted to it. It is an extra European species, and seems to be the 
Asiatic bird generally known under the name of G. gigantea, Pall. Temminck, 
however, says that Gmelin changed this name from the original one of G. leuco- 
geranos, Pall., and has figured and described it as such in the Planches Colorees. 
