Page:The birds of America, Volume 6.djvu/186

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138
GREAT AMERICAN WHITE EGRET.


intestine is very long and extremely slender, measuring 6 feet 7 inches in length, its average diameter 2 twelfths. The rectum, b df, is 3 inches long; the cloaca, d ef, globular, 1^ inches in diameter; the ccecum, c, single, as in the other Herons, 3 twelfths long, and nearly 2 twelfths in diameter. The trachea is 1 foot 9i inches long, of nearly uniform diameter, flattened a little for about half its length, its greatest breadth 3jtwelfths; 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 laryn- geal 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, Tap ay a 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.