Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/684

664 above the heel like a wading-bird. The "contour feathers" have a large downy "after-shaft," a characteristic of gallinaceous birds, and there is a thick, wattle-like caruncle on the forehead, a common feature of the swan family.

The intestinal canal presents first a large crop, a rather long proventriculus or true stomach, well furnished with tubular follicles, a decidedly muscular gizzard or grinding-stomach, and two long appendages, the cæca, all features which are characteristic of gallinaceous birds. On the other hand we find the gastric follicles large and tubular, more like those of the swan than of any other that I know of, and quite unlike the lobulated follicles of the Gallinœ. The tendinous parts of the gizzard, moreover, are at the sides, instead of before and behind as is the (almost?) universal rule.

It would probably be neither interesting nor profitable to recapitulate here the various resemblances to and differences from other families, presented by the bony framework of the chionis. The features of the skull are pretty evenly balanced between those characteristic of the plovers and of the gulls, with a slight sprinkling of the ostrich. The breastbone, a part to which great importance is attached by ornithologists in the determination of affinities, is decidedly like that of the gull family, between which and the plovers, considering only the skeleton, the genus must probably be placed, as De Blainville has already decided. That is to say, on summing up the various osteological peculiarities which mark the skeleton of this very composite bird, the greatest number is found to lie on the gull side.

Considered with regard to habits, however, the confusion grows worse again. It looks and flies like a pigeon, croaks like a crow, "chats" like a blackbird, or (in confinement) chirps like a fowl. It lives, to be sure, upon the seacoast, and feeds largely upon small marine animals and seaweed; but it dislikes wading, becomes perfectly helpless when accidentally in the water, and has no idea of swimming. Its diet is as various as that of fowls, and like them it swallows numbers of pebbles to aid digestion. Its natural tendencies seem to be toward domestication, or at least companionship with man. Like the plants of Kerguelen, it finds its nearest relatives in Patagonia, although Africa is so much less distant. How shall we explain all these incongruities? Perhaps it represents an older, more synthetic form, from which Gallinœ, Waders, and Gulls, are descended, preserving its own identity by its isolated habitat. Perhaps, as the ostrich represents an ancestral type, its apparent struthious characters may indicate real relationship after all, handed down from that distant time when all birds were more nearly allied than now. Since there certainly once was a time when Kerguelen Island, perhaps then part of a continent, was habitable, when the tree trunks that are now lying buried in its northern hills were upright and flourishing forests, perhaps the men of those days had also a bird tamed, like the domestic fowl; and