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Show 1899.] INTERNAL ANATOMY OF NOTORNIS. 89 perfectly fresh condition, and I at once proceeded to examine those parts of the viscera which might have interest to the systematist. As I am not an " ornithologist," and have but little experience in the subject of avian anatomy, it may be that I have omitted to note some special points of importance : for such omissions I must apologize ; and as the viscera have been presented, it may be possible to rectify the omissions at some future time. The bird was a young female, in Avhich the ovary was very small, none of the eggs being more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter. This fact is of itself of some interest to naturalists, for the sex of the previous specimens had not been determined ; and the coloration of this specimen is so similar to that of the skin in the Dresden Museum that there can be no doubt but that it, too, was a female, as also is one of the skins in the British Museum ; the other skin appears from Buller's account to be of brighter plumage, and is presumed by him to be a male. A full account of the colour of Notornis, as well as of the history of the previous specimens, will be found in Sir Walter Buller's ' History of the Birds of NeAV Zealand' ; and an account of the history of this fourth specimen and the external appearance of this fourth skin was read by m e at the meeting of the Otago Institute in September, and Avill be published in the ' Transactions of the N e w Zealand Institute' for the current year. In the present paper I confine myself to facts of internal anatomy. The viscera to Avhich I directed m y attention were: (a) the alimentary tract, (b) the tongue, (c) the larynx, (d) the syrinx. Of all these structures I have made careful measurements and drawings, some of which accompany this paper. (a) The Alimentary Tract.-The oesophagus and glandular stomach present no feature of special interest; the gizzard, of the type usual in graminivorous birds, is of large size, measuring 3| incbes by 2\ inches (the length of the entire bird from the tip of the beak to the tip of the rectrices is 23 inches). The intestine is 48 inches in length from the pylorus up to the cloaca. The duodenum is | inch across, and this loop measures 5g inches. The intestine is thrown into a few major folds, Avhich are SIIOAAU in fig. 1 (p. 90). Unfortunately the mesentery had been slightly injured by the taxidermist in removing the viscera, but I believe that the figure is a true representation of the convolutions. I need not describe them in detail, as the figure is sufficiently explicit, and I leave ornithologists to determine the systematic value of the arrangement of these coils, Avhich appear to agree closely with the scheme given by Mitchell for the Rails 1. The remains of the vitelline duct (v) is ^ an inch in length, and arises just 24 inches from the pylorus, that is halfway along the length of the intestine. The paired caeca are of large size : they arise (c) about 6 inches from the posterior end of the gut, and each measures 9 inches in length. It is at first much narrower than the intestine, and this 1 Mitchell, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1896, p. 49. |