Chionis Sentence Examples

The bustards he would place with the " Limicoles," as also Dromas and Chionis, the sheath-bill (q.v.).

Next stands the order Gallinae with 4 " cohorts "; (I) Tetraonomorphae, comprising 2 families, the sand-grouse (Pterocles) and the grouse proper, among which the Central American Oreophasis finds itself; (2) Phasianomorphae, with 4 families, pheasants peacocks, turkeys, guinea fowls, partridges, quails, and hemipodes (Turnix); (3) Macronyches, the megapodes, with 2 families; (4) the Duodecimpennatae, the curassows and guans, also with 2 families; (5) the Struthioniformes, composed of the tinamous; and (6) the Subgrallatores with 2 families, one consisting of the curious South American genera Thinocorus and Attagis and the other of the sheathbill (Chionis).

The sea-elephant and sea-leopard are characteristic. Penguins of various kinds are abundant; a teal (Querquedula Eatoni) peculiar to Kerguelen and the Crozets is also found in considerable numbers, and petrels, especially the giant petrel (Ossifraga gigantea), skuas, gulls, sheath-bills (Chionis minor), albatross, terns, cormorants and Cape pigeons frequent the island.

Forster in 1788 (Enchiridion, p. 37) conferred upon it, from its snowy plumage, the name Chionis, which has most properly received general acceptance, though in the same year the compiler Gmelin termed the genus Vaginalis, as a rendering of Pennant's English name, and the species alba.

It has thus become the Chionis alba of ornithology.