TINAMID ZE, a family of gallinaceous birds inhabiting the tropical portions of South America, having many remarkable features in their internal organization, and with the striking external character that the tail is exceedingly short or entirely absent. They are intermediate in form between the phasianidee and the bustards, having the long neck and legs and small feet of the latter, and the naked scale covering the nostrils, as in the former. They are sometimes classed as a genus of the tetraonidce, or grouse family See GROUSE, ante. Many of the skull sutures are persistent, the brain is very small, and they have but little intelligence. Mr. Darwin saw many of the tinamus rufescens (called by English travelers partridges) while in South America. He says that a man on horseback by riding round them in a spiral, could kill an indefinite number by knocking them on the head with a stick. The more common method, however, was to catch them
in a noose made of the stem of an ostrich's feather fastened to the end of a long stick. Of the family there are said to be as many as 41 species, and 9 genera, included iu two sub families, tinamince and tinamotines, the first containing the genus tinamus with 7 species, and the genera noth.ocercus, 3 species; crypturus, 16 species; rhynchotus, 2 species; nothoprocta, 6 species;` nothura, 4 species; taoniscus, 1 species. The second sub-family contains two genera, eudramia, 1 species, and tinamotis, 1 species. Some of the species inhabit the deepest forests, some live on the open plains. They occupy the same place in South America that the partridges do in North America. The females lay from half a dozen to a dozen eggs in nests, made on the ground.