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The furculum, pelvis, and bones of the tail are in their natural position. The tail consists of twenty vertebrae, each of which supports a pair of plumes. The length of the tail with its feathers is 11 1/2 inches, and its breadth 3 1/2. It is obtusely truncated at the end.
The furculum, or merry-thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk; the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers and of down on the body. The vanes and shafts of the feathers can be seen by the naked eye.
Slender bodies, too, and the lessened divergence of the furculum, would slightly diminish the spread of the wings, and so would affect the measurements taken. As the wing-bones, moreover, are to some extent correlated with the beak and the feet, the artificial selection of shortened beaks might tend to shorten the wing as well as the feet.
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