OCR Text |
Show 508 MR. A. H. GARROD ON THE ANATOMY [June 6, existence of the mesomyodian voice-organ, there can be scarcely any doubt that had he lived subsequently to Miiller he would never have separated its possessors off from their oscine allies, considering that he had fundamental palatal and pterylographic characters to fall back upon. The investigations of Macgillivray* and others have made it evident that colic caeca (of small size) are present in all true Passerine birds; and this fact, when correlated with the universal presence of a nude coccygeal oil-gland, has led me t to place them in near relationship with those other Cuvierian Passeres (the Cuculidae excepted) in which the oil-gland is nude and caeca coli are always present-away from the remainder of his group, in which no caeca are developed and the oil-gland is tufted. The Passeriformes and Piciformes thus defined, all wanting the ambiens muscle across the knee, are included in m y major division of the Anomalogonata. Taking the summation of the characters above referred to, in association with others too well known to require special mention, the P A S S E R E S may be defined as those Anomalogonatous birds with the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th toes of the foot directed forwards, and the hallux backwards, in which the flexor longus hallucis muscle is independent of the flexor perforans digitorum, the colic caeca are short, the oil-gland nude, at the same time that it is of a characteristic shape, and the palate eegithognathous i. Among the Anomalogonatae there are three toes directed forwards in the Bucerotidae, Alcedinidae, Coliidee, Upupidae, Coraciinae, Momotinae, Caprimulgidae, and Meropidae ; the flexor longus hallucis is free from the flexor perforans digitorum in the Upupidae ; colic caeca are present in the Caprimulgidae, Coraciinae, Momotinae, Galbulidae, Trogonidae, Meropidae, and almost certainly so in the Bucconidae, in which families also the oil-gland is nude; the palate is aegithognathous in Thinocorus, Turnix, and the Cypselinee, nearly so in the Caprimulgidae and Trochilinae. M y investigations into the myology of birds have supplied me with another character of great practical value, which, though in one or two cases slightly disguised, is never found in any but veritable Passeres. It is a peculiarity in the method of insertion of the tendon of the tensor patagii brevis of the wing. In the triangular patagium of the wing of the bird the tendons of two muscles are to be found. One is that of the tensor patagii longus, which forms the supporting cord of the free margin of the membrane itself. The second is that of the tensor patagii brevis, which courses parallel with the humerus, not distant from that bone, to the muscles and fasciae of the forearm. In the Ramphastinae, Capitoninae, and Picinae, where this muscle is less complicated than in any other birds, it arises, as is generally the case, from the apex of the upper of the two processes at the scapular extremity of the furcula, as well as by a small special slip from the superficial fibres of the pectoralis major muscle, which differentiates itself off from * Audubon's Ornithological Biography, 1838. t P. Z. S. 1874, p. 119. \ Prof. Huxley, " Classification of Birds," P. Z. S. 1867, p. 456. |