The roof of the mouth is slightly concave, with a median and two lateral longitudinal ridges, the palate convex, the posterior aperture of the nares linear, without an anterior slit. The mouth is rather narrow, measuring only 8 twelfths across, but is dilatable to 1 1/2 inch, the branches of the lower mandible being very elastic. The aperture of the ear is very small, being 2 twelfths in diameter, and roundish. The œsophagus is 2 feet 2 inches long, 1 inch and 4 twelfths in diameter, extremely thin, the longitudinal fibres within the transverse, the inner coat raised into numerous longitudinal ridges. The œsophagus continues of uniform diameter, and passes as it were directly into the stomach, there being no enlargement at its termination indicative of the proventriculus, which however exists, but in a modified form, there being at the termination of the gullet eight longitudinal series of large mucous crypts, about half an inch long, and immediately afterwards a continuous belt, 1 1/2 inch in breadth, of small cylindrical mucous crypts with minute apertures. Beyond this the stomach forms a hemispherical sac 1 1/2 inch in diameter, of a membranous structure, having externally beneath the cellular coat a layer of slender muscular fibres, convex towards two roundish tendons, and internally a soft, thin, smooth lining, perforated by innumerable minute apertures of glandules. The intestine is very long and extremely slender, measuring 6 feet 7 inches in length, its average diameter 2 twelfths. The rectum, b d f, is 3 inches long; the cloaca, d e f, globular, 1 1/2 inch in diameter; the cœcum, c, single, as in the other Herons, 3 twelfths long, and nearly 2 twelfths in diameter.
The trachea is 1 foot 9 1/4 inches long, of nearly uniform diameter, flattened a little for about half its length, its greatest breadth 3 1/2 twelfths; the rings 285, the last four rings divided and arched. The contractor muscles are extremely thin, the sterno-tracheal moderate, and coming off at the distance of 1 inch from the lower extremity, from which place also there proceeds to the two last rings a pair of slender inferior laryngeal muscles. The bronchi are very short, of about two half rings.
Tapayaxin.
The animal represented on the plate is the Tapayaxin of Hernandez, Phrynosoma orbicularis of Wiegmann, Tapaya orbicularis of Cuvier. The specimen from which it was drawn was entrusted to my care by my friend Richard Harlan, M. D., to whom it was presented by Mr Nuttall, who found it in California. A notice respecting this species by Dr Harlan will be found in the American Journal of Science and Arts, vol. xxxi.
GLOSSY IBIS.
Ibis Falcinellus, Vieill.
PLATE CCCLXXXVII. Male.
The first intimation of the existence of this beautiful species of Ibis within the limits of the United States is due to Mr George Ord of Philadelphia, the friend and companion of the celebrated Alexander Wilson. It was described by him in the first volume of the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He states that “on the seventh of May of the present year (1817), Mr Thomas Say received from Mr Oram, of Great Egg Harbour, a fine specimen of Tantalus, which had been shot there. It is the first instance which has come to my knowledge of this species having been found in the United States. I was informed that a recent specimen of this bird was, likewise in the month of May, presented to the Baltimore Museum, and that two individuals were killed in the district of Columbia.” In the sequel Mr Ord compares it with Dr Latham’s account of the Tantalus Mexicanus of that author, and conjectures that it is the same.
It is not a little curious to see the changes of opinion that have taken place within these few years among naturalists who have thought of comparing American and European specimens of the birds which have been alleged to be the same in both continents. The Prince of Musignano, for example, who has given a figure of the very individual mentioned by Mr Ord, thought at the time when he published the fourth volume of his continuation of Wilson’s American Ornithology, that our Glossy Ibis was the one described by the older European writers under the name of Ibis Falcinellus. Now, however, having altered his notions so far as to seem desirous of proving that the same species of bird cannot exist on both the continents, he has latterly produced it anew under the name of Ibis Ordi. This new name I cannot with any degree of propriety adopt. I consider it no compliment to the discoverer of a bird to reject the name which he has given it, even for the purpose of calling it after himself.
The Glossy Ibis is of exceedingly rare occurrence in the United States, where it appears only at long and irregular intervals, like a wanderer who has lost his way. It exists in Mexico, however, in vast numbers. In the spring of 1837, I saw flocks of it in the Texas; but even there it is merely a summer resident, associating with the White Ibis, along the grassy margins of the rivers and bayous, and apparently going to and returning from its roosting places in the interior of the country. Its flight resembles that of its companion, the White Ibis, and it is probable that it feeds on the same kinds of crustaceous animals, and breeds on low bushes in the same great associations as that species, but we unfortunately had no opportunity of verifying this conjecture. Mr Nuttall, in his Ornithology of the United States and Canada, says that “a specimen has occasionally been exposed for sale in the market of Boston.”