Hans Friedrich Gadow

“ Under such conditions we might expect to find an extremely plentiful animal population, one as rich as that which inhabits the same latitudes in Central America, not many degrees farther to the west; but no instance perhaps can be cited which shows more strikingly the difference between a continental and an insular fauna, since, making every allowance for the ravages of cultivation by civilized man, the contrary is the case, and possibly no area of land so highly favoured by nature is so poorly furnished with the higher forms of animal life. ”

“ When the creature has swallowed the spiked bait it keeps its jaws so firmly closed that it can be dragged out of the water. A kind of plover, Pluvianus aegyptius, often sits upon basking crocodiles, and, since the latter often rest with gaping mouth, it is possible that these agile birds do pick the reptiles’ teeth in search of parasites. Being a very watchful bird, its cry of warning, when it flies off on the approach of danger, is probably appreciated by the crocodile. ”

“ The food of the flamingo seems to consist chiefly of small aquatic invertebrate animals which live in the mud of lagoons, for instance Mollusca, but also of Confervae and other low salt-water algae. Whilst feeding, the bird wades about, stirs up the mud with its feet, and, reversing the ordinary position of its head so as to hold the crown downwards and to look backwards, sifts the mud through its bill. ”

“ It is idle to speculate on the habits of this earliest of known birds. That it could fly is certain, and the feet show it to have been well adapted to arboreal life. The clawed slender fingers did not make Archaeopteryx any more quadrupedal or bat-like in its habits than is a kestrel hawk, with its equally large, or even larger thumb-claw. ”

“ The food of sea-snakes consists entirely of small fish; among them species with very strong spines. As all these animals are killed by the poison of the snake before they are swallowed, and as their muscles are perfectly relaxed, their armature is harmless to the snake, which begins to swallow its prey from the head, and depresses the spines as deglutition proceeds. Sea-snakes belong to the most poisonous species of the whole order. Accidents are rarely caused by them, because they are extremely shy and swim away on the least alarm ”

“ When the spring is released, so to speak, by filling the apparatus with blood and by the play of the hyoid muscles, the heavy thick end shoots out upon the insect prey and is withdrawn by its own elasticity. The whole act is like a flash. An ordinary chameleon can shoot a fly at the distance of fully 6 in., and it can manage even a big sphinx moth. ”

“ The vascular system has attained the highest state of development of all reptiles. The heart is practically quadrilocular, the right and left halves being completely partitioned, except for a small communication, the foramen Panizzae, between the right and left aortae where these cross each other on leaving their respective ventricles. The outer ear lies in a recess which can be closed tightly by a dorsal flap of skin. The power of hearing is acute, and so is the sight, the eyes being protected by upper and lower lids and by a nictitating membrane. ”

“ Leaving, however, this matter as in some degree hypothetical, we have as genera, families, or perhaps even larger groups, a great many very remarkable forms which are characteristic of, or peculiar to, the Neotropical region in part, if not as a whole. Of families we find twenty-three, or maybe more, absolutely restricted thereto, besides at least eight which, being peculiar to the New World, extend their range into the Nearctic region, but are there so feebly developed that their origin may be safely ascribed to the southern portion of America. ”

“ When all the pigment is shifted towards the surface, as near the epidermis as possible, the creature looks black; when the black pigment is withdrawn into the basal portions of the chromatophores the skin appears yellow.
The lungs are very capacious, and end in several narrow blind sacs which extend far down into the body cavity, so that not only the chest but the whole body can be blown up. This happens when the animals hiss and fight, as they often do. ”

“ The stomach is globular, rather muscular, with a pair of tendinous centres like those of birds; its size is comparatively small, but the digestion is so rapid and powerful that every bone of the creature’s prey is dissolved whilst still being stowed away in the wide and long gullet. ”

“ But the Australian region is also remarkable for its ornithic singularity. All the existing Ratitae (with the exception of the ostriches of Africa and South America, belonging to the genera Struthio and Rhea, and comprising at most but five species) are found in Austrogaea and nowhere else. Of the Passeres the honey-suckers (Meliphagidae) are most characteristic, and, abounding in genera and species, extend to almost every part of the region, yet only one species of Ptilotis oversteps its limits, crossing the sea from Lombok to Bali. Other peculiar families are much more confined. ”

“ There is no other protection, but slight, imperfectly movable folds of skin arise from the outer rim. The largest ear-opening is met with in the owls, with correspondingly larger folds of skin, the function of which is less that of protection than, probably, the catching of sound. In many owls the right and left ears are asymmetrical, and this asymmetry affects the whole of the temporal region, all the bones which surround the outer and middle ear, notably the squamosal and the quadrate, so that the skull becomes lopsided, one ear being turned obliquely down, the other upwards. ”

“ The humerus with its crests, ridges and processes, presents so many modifications characteristic of the various groups of birds, that its configuration alone is not only of considerable taxonomic value but that almost any genus, excepting, of course, those of Passeres, can be “spotted” by a close examination and comparison of this bone. When the wing is folded the long glenoid surface of the head of the humerus is bordered above by the tuberculum externum or superius, in the middle and below by the tuberculum medium or inferius for the insertion of the coraco-brachialis posterior muscle. ”

“ There are many perching birds, e.g. all the Passeres, which do not possess this muscle at all, whilst many of those which have it fully developed, e.g. Anseres, can hardly be said to “perch.”
Garrod went so far as to divide all the birds into Homalogonatae and Anomalogonatae, according to the presence or absence of the ambiens muscle. This resulted in a failure. To appreciate this, it is sufficient to enumerate the birds without the critical muscle: Passeriformes and Coraciiformes, without exception; Ardeae and Podiceps; lastly various genera of storks, pigeons, parrots, petrels and auks. ”

“ The keel, or carina sterni, is formed as a direct cartilaginous outgrowth of the body of the sternum, ossifying from a special centre. This keel is much reduced in the New Zealand parrot, Stringops, less in various flightless rails, in the dodo and solitaire. It is absent in the Ratitae, which from this feature have received their name, but considerable traces of a cartilaginous keel occur in the embryo of the ostrich, showing undeniably that the absence of a keel in the recent bird is not a primitive, fundamental feature. ”

“ That is to say, the distribution of forms in time is a subject so much connected with the distribution of forms in space, that the one can hardly be separated from the other. Granting this is a general truth, it must yet be acknowledged as a special fact, that in fossil birds we have as yet but scanty means of arriving at any precise results which will justify bold generalization in the matter of avine distribution. Remains of extinct birds are, compared with those of other classes of vertebrates, exceedingly scarce, and these have been found in very few, widely separated countries. ”

“ Originally terrestrial groups have taken to an entirely aquatic life, and vice versâ; others, originally endowed with the power of flight, have become, or are transforming themselves into, absolutely cursorial forms; some members of one group live entirely on seeds, while others have become fierce fishers, and so forth. Only by the most careful inquiry into their history can their relationship or pedigree be unravelled. A statement may now be given of Gadow’s classification of birds, in which the extinct forms have been intercalated so far as possible. ”

“ Three of the species have the body ornamented with black rings, but the fourth and most common (B. coeruleus) , the "krait" of Bengal, possesses a dull and more uniform coloration. The fangs of the bungarums are shorter than those of the cobras, and cannot penetrate so deeply into the wound. Their bite is therefore less dangerous and the effect on the general system slower, so that there is more prospect of recovery by treatment. Nevertheless, the krait is probably the most destructive snake to human life in India, since it is very common and often creeps into the houses. ”

“ Thus it has come to pass that the muscles of the hind limbs are, like their framework, more easily compared with those of reptiles and mammals than are the wings, whilst within the class of birds they show an enormous amount of variation in direct correlation with their manifold requirements. The only really aberrant modifications of the wing-muscles are found in the Ratitae, where they are, however, all easily explained by reduction, and in the penguins, where the wings are greatly specialized into blades for rowing with screw-like motions. ”

“ The majority of snakes are active during the day, their energy increasing with the increasing temperature; whilst some delight in the moist sweltering heat of dense tropical vegetation, others expose themselves to the fiercest rays of the midday sun. Not a few, however, lead a nocturnal life, and many of them have, accordingly, their pupil contracted into a vertical or more rarely a horizontal slit. Those which inhabit temperate latitudes hibernate. Snakes are the most stationary of all vertebrates; as long as a locality affords them food and shelter they have no inducement to change it. ”

“ The oviduct is always a Müllerian duct separate from the ovary and opening from the body cavity. The adult kidney is a metanephros with separate ureter; the mesonephros and mesonephric duct become in the adult male the efferent duct of the testis. The intestine and the reproductive and urinary ducts open into a common cloaca. There is usually an exoskeleton in the form of scales; in the birds the scales take the form of feathers. There are two aortic arches in reptiles, in birds only one-the right. The heart is usually trilocular, becoming quadrilocular in crocodiles and birds. ”

“ Between fifty and sixty so-called families of land birds alone are found within its limits, and of them at least nine are peculiar; the typical genera of which are Buphaga, Euryceros, Philepitta, Musophaga, Irrisor, Leptosoma, Colius, Serpentarius, Struthio, Aepyornis. It is singular that only the first three of them belong to the order Passeriformes, a proportion which is not maintained in any other tropical region. The number of peculiar genera, besides those just mentioned, is too great for them to be named here ”

“ L. K. Schmarda [3] divided the land into twenty-one realms, characterizing these mainly by their birds. P. L. Sclater [4] was the first to divide the world into a few great “regions,” the Palaearctic, Ethiopian, Indian and Australian forming one group, the “Old World” (Palaeogaea) ; and the Nearctic and Neotropical forming a second, the New World (Neogaea) . ”