GALLINA'CEOUS BIRDS (Lat. gallus, a cock), or RASORES (Lat. scrapers), an order of birds, more generally valuable to man than any other order, containing at once the most important species domesticated as poultry, and those most sought after as game. The common domestic fowl may be regarded as the type of the order. Like it, the G. B. in general have a small bead; a rather short bill, with the upper mandible a little arched; nostrils placed on the sides of the bill, and usually in a soft membranous space at its base; the figure bulky; the wings short, and not governed by powerful muscles, nor adapted for long or rapid flight; the feet with three toes before, and one behind— which is articulated higher than the others, and is sometimes wanting—adapted for walking on the ground and for scraping, which is much resorted to, in order to procure food and for other purposes; the digestive organs complex, the crop large, the gizzard very muscular, the intestine long, with two very large area. The head, at least of the males, is very generally furnished with appendages, as a crest, comb, wattles, etc. The feet of the males are also often furnished with spurs, and at least during the breeding season the males are very quarrelsome. The males of many species are birds of splendid plumage; that of the females is sober, but females of very advanced age often assume a plumage similar to that of the males. Some of the G. are polygamous, some pair
at the breeding season; the nest of all of them is artless, and the males take no part in incubation, nor in the rearing of the young. The young are comparatively feathered when hatched, and are immediately able to run about and pick up food for themselves, but are for some time most affectionately tended and protected by their mother, and by her the proper food is sought for them and pointed out to them, or broken into suffi ciently small pieces, and laid before them. The G. B. have unmelodious voices. Except the curassows, they make their nests on the ground. Some of them are found in almost all parts of the world. Besides those already named, guans, pheasants, grouse, partridges, quails, ptarmigans, peacocks, turkeys, guinea-fowls, tragopans, and tinamous, may be mentioned as examples of this order. Pigeons are generally ranked. in it by ornithologists, but rather doubtfully, as they differ not a little from the true gallinaccous birds. See COLUMBIDIE. Interesting analogies have been pointed out between this order of birds and the order of ruminants among mammals, in the com plexity of the digestive organs, bulkiness of the frame, low intelligence, easy domesti cation, usefulness to man, and proneness to variation from the influence of external circumstances, giving rise to different breeds. • .