OCR Text |
Show 512 MR. A. H. GARROD ON THE ANATOMY [June 6, ulnar superficial fascia, where it becomes lost. It sends forwards fasciculus from about its middle, to end like the similar band in the Meropidae. It is figured in Plate L. fig. 2. Its difference from the Passerine arrangement is well-marked. In the Bucerotidae, as found in several species of Buceros, Toccus, and Bucorvus, the only difference from Upupa is that the extra outer fasciculus is very much shorter, as seen in Plate XLIX. fig. 2. The lengthy tendon from the major pectoral, which is particularly large, is represented. In the Alcedinidae the differences are so considerable in the several genera that I reserve the description of the muscle in this order for a future occasion. As the Cuculidae and Musophagidae are frequently included together with the families above referred to, the arrangement of the short tensor in these birds is represented in Plate L. fig. 3 and in Plate XLIX. fig. 3. In all the Cuculidae the undivided tendon runs on to the ulnar superficial fascia without any complication. In the Musophagidae the whole tendon is comparatively feeble, and, if it were more definite at its margins, would be exactly like that in Upupa. Next, with reference to the division of the order Passeres into minor sections. Four or five pairs of muscles running to the ends of the topmost three bronchial semirings constitute the Oscine syrinx, the distinctive features of which are therefore its acromyodian and complex nature. M M . Keyserling and Blasius were the first to associate with this the bilaminate planta-an exception to which occurs in the case of the Alaudidae, as we all know, these birds possessing a divided planta together with an Oscine syrinx. Mr. Sclater has kindly referred me to a paper by Mr. Strickland* on Heterocnemis navia (there called Holocnemis flammata), in which it is shown that in that Formicarian bird the character of the planta is indistinguishable from that of the bilaminate Oscines. With reference to this and closely allied genera it must be noted that the scutellation of the front of the tarsus is also obliterated, so that the simplicity of the planta is only a participation of the condition which maintains in the tarsus generally. Therefore, with this exception (which from its associations can hardly be looked upon as such), it may be said as yet that no bird which is not acromyodian has a bilaminate planta. Nevertheless the law enunciated by Cabanis, to the effect that when in a Passerine bird possessing ten primary remiges the first is very long, then that bird is not Oscine (or Acromyodian), but " Clamatorial " (or Mesomyodian), led that able ornithologist to place Pitta in the latter group, although it possesses a bilaminate planta ; since which time Johannes Miiller is not the only biologist who has wished to know the nature of the syrinx of that bird, of which Sundevallf, in 1872, remarks, "musculi laryngis inferioris ignoti." * Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist. 1844, vol. xiii. p. 415. t Method, nat. Av. disp. Tentamen, 1872, p. 5. |