INTRODUCTION. 
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pouch, placed under the bill ; while, on the male Bustard, she has 
bestowed a provision, somewhat similar to the additional stomach of the 
Camel, and of a size sufficient to contain many pints of water, so neces- 
sary for its partner and its young, in the dry and barren solitudes which it 
frequents. From the gizzard two tubes arise, one the oesophagus, or 
gullet, the passage for the admission cf the food ; the other, the intestinal 
canal for its emission. On this canal, near the vent, most birds have two 
appendices, or blind guts, as the Rail, the Jay, the Rook, and all the 
Sparrow tribes, though a few, like quadrupedes, as the Heron and the 
Bittern, have but one f® and, in the Woodpeckers, they are wanting. 
In the former of these birds, they are large, and further up the 
intestinal canal, but in the Rook and the Jay they are small, and nearer 
the rectum ; they are scarcely discernible in some of the Thrush genus ; in 
the poultry kinds they are the longest. These appendices in the Water 
Rail, the Sandpiper, the Common Fowl, and many others, are evidently 
intended for reservoirs for the foeces, the mouths, or outlets of which are 
towards the rectum but, in many birds, such as the Jay, the Tit Lark, 
I must confess, that in the multitudes of birds which I have dissected, I never found an 
instance of a land bird having but one appendix, and I have seen the appendices of the Rail, 
the Moor Hen, the Sandpiper, the Brown Owl, and the Common Fowl, full of foeces. 
” Buffon has most fancifully, and without his usual judgment, attributed the small size of the 
male Eagle to the want of a ccecum, and the superior stature of the female, to her having two 
coeca. Whether the male of the Eagle tribe in general be found without this appendage, I can- 
not determine ; but in the dissection of the male Osprey, I found two small coeca on its 
intestinal canal, each about a quarter of an inch in length, offerirtg no appearance of their being 
receptacles for the foeces. The observation, therefore, cannot extend to the Osprey. Indeed 
this opinion stands but on a slight foundation. The situation and smallness of the coeca, in all 
the Hawk tribes in which they are found, (as well as in most other birds) show us, that the office 
which they perform can scarcely be credited to contribute to the extension of the body of the 
bird. They are, in those birds, near the rectum *, they have no connection with the body, but 
by the intestinal canal, and are so exceedingly diminutive, that even in those species of the 
