On the presence or absence of air in the bones of birds / by Edwards Crisp.

  • Edwards Crisp
Date:
[1857]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the presence or absence of air in the bones of birds / by Edwards Crisp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Common Gull. L. canus. Black-headed Gull. L. ridibun- dus. Herring Gull. L. argentatus. Great Black-backed Gull. L. marinus. Razor Bill. A. Torda. Puffin. F. arctica. Red-throated Diver. C. septen- trionalis. Moor Hen. G. chloropus. Coot. F. atra. Curlew. N. arquata. Godwit. L. melanura. Dotterel. C. morinellus. Common Snipe. 8. gallinayo. Jack Snipe. S. gallinula. Sanderling. A. vulgaris. Water Ousel. C. aquaticus. Swift, Common. H. apus. House Martin. H. urbica. Swallow. H. rustica. Sand Martin. H. riparia. Goat-sucker. C. Europceus. Chaffinch. F. coelebs. Yellow-hammer. E. citrinella. Sparrow. F. domestica. Wheat-ear. S. cenanthe. Wren, Common. T. Europceus. Wren, Crested. R. auricapillus. Robin. S. rubicula. Blackbird. T. merula. Thrush. T. musicus. Fieldfare. T. pilaris. Red-wing. T. iliacus. Missel Thrush. E. viseivorus. Starling. S. vulgaris. Hedge Sparrow. A. modidaris. Little Creeper. C.familiaris. Wood Lark. A. arborea. Oyster-catcher. H. ostralegus. I have mislaid the notes of my dissections of many other British birds, and as I do not like to trust to memory, I will reserve these for the. concluding part of my paper. Of the above fifty-two birds, the first only had many of the bones permeated with air; the next thirteen on the list had the humeri only hollow, and among these it will be observed that there are many of short flight. Of the remaining thirty-eight none of them had marrow in the femora or humeri, and judging from a few that were examined (the snipe, e. g.), none of the bones contained air. The last list includes some birds, as the swift, martin and swallow, that are longer on the wing and probably of swifter flight than any of the feathered creation. By way of testing more accurately the correctness of my conclu- sions, I performed the following experiments :—I introduced a blow- pipe into the trachea of a common duck, a cock, a French partridge, an English partridge, and a snipe ; I opened the humeri and femora of all, and placed the dead birds under water; I then inflated the lungs and air-cells in the chest and abdomen, the size of the birds being greatly increased by the inflation. In the cock the air escaped freely from the aperture in the humerus; but in the other birds no air was present. I then removed the humerus and femur at the upper joint, but still no air escaped on inflation. As I have stated before, all these birds, with the exception of the snipe, had hollow humeri, but none of them had air in the thigh-bones ; these experi- ments, however, require repetition on a larger scale. In my next paper I purpose describing the air-sacs in the thoracic and abdominal cavities of birds ; the method by which air is ad- mitted to the hollow bones; and the flight of birds in relation to these matters. [From the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, January 13, 1857.]