- So spelt in the new “Check-list,” R.A.O.U., but formerly Acanthockæra.
- Shufeldt, R. W., “An Arrangement of the Families and Higher Groups of Birds,” Amer. Anat., vol. xxxviii., Nos. 455–456, Boston, Nov.-Dec., 1904, pp. 835–856.
- Also, “Contributions to the Comparative Osteology of the Families of North American Passeres,” Jour. Morph., vol. iii., No, 1, Boston, June, 1889, pp. 81–114, Pls. V. and VI.
- Schufeidt, R. W., “On the Comparative Osteology of the Passerine Bird Arachnotheta magna” Proc. Zool. Soc., Lond., Aug., 1909, pp 527–544, Pl. LXVIII.
- Schufeidt, R, W., “On the Comparative Osteology of the Passerine Bird Aracknothera magna, Proc. Zool. Soc., Lond., 1909 (Aug., 1909), pp. 527–544, PL LXVII. The two paragraphs quoted are found upon page 533 of this paper. When this contribution appeared there was considerable elation in many quarters over the fact that I had found all the representatives of the Nectariniidæ and Meliphagidæ to be completely Passerine in the matter of their osteology, and in no way especially related to the Humming-Birds (Trochilidce). Indeed, so exultant were some of our avian morphologists, and nearly all of our systematic ornithologists, over this announcement, and the candid and emphatic manner in which it was set forth, that the circumstance was quite lost sight of by them, that, although there was but little in the skeleton of any of the birds belonging to the Nectariniidæ and Meliphagidæ which at all suggested an affinity between those two families and the Trochiliæ this circumstance in no way detracted from the truth of my previous demonstrations, published in many places in Europe and America, that the skeleton of a typical Swift (Cypseli) and a Humming-Bird (Trochili) were, in their corresponding characters, apart from their “unnotched sterna” and “long hands,” essentially utterly different, and it still remains for the avian taxonomer to decide what such wide differences in skeletal structure as exists between these two groups of birds, the Cyfseli and Trochili, really indicates.
- There sometimes seems to be an individual variation in the matter of this character, as the manubrium is somewhat shorter in the sternum of a female Anihochcera carunculata, collected on the 5th of May, 1865, by E. P. Palmer, (?) at Dobroyde, and numbered 9,394 in the collection of the U.S. National Museum. (I fail to find this locality on any of the standard maps.)
- In the species formerly known as Grallina australis, which occurs on Clarence River, New South Wales, the sternum is remarkable for having large elliptical foramina, one on either side, in its xiphoidal extremity, instead of “notches,” as is the rule throughout the Passeres. There are three of these sterna in the Collections of the U.S. National Museum (Nos. 9,396,♂, 9,278, ♀, and 9,279, ♀), but this character occurs only in the sternum of the male.
- Coues states in the “Century Dictionary,” under Grallina:—”A genus of oscine Passerine birds, variously located in the ornithological system, lately placed in a family called Prionopidæ. The Pied Grallina (G. picata) inhabits Australia. It is entirely black and white, and 11 inches long. A second species, G. bruijni, is found in the Arfak Mountains of New Guinea; also called Tanypus and Grallipes” (p. 2,594). The only birds known to me, to which the specific name bruijni has been applied, belong to the Paradiseidæ. It would be very interesting to examine the entire skeleton of a species exhibiting the above described character in the sterna of the two sexes. I believe this condition may occasionally be found to occur in Ptiloris paradisea, of which species I have five sterna before me (No. 9,366, Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus., ♂ right side). The osteology of the Paradiseidæ stands in need of comparative description.
- Shufeldt, R. W., “The Myology of the Raven,” p. 140, fig. 39.
Emu - Austral Ornithology
Volume 13, 1913 - Issue 1