Gallinaceous Birds

Gallinaceous Birds (Lat. gallus, 'a cock'), or RASORES (Lat., 'scrapers'), an old order of birds, including the Fowls, Sand-grouse, Hemipods—e.g. Turnex, and often also the Pigeons. The title Gallinæ is often still used to include the pheasant family (Phasianidæ), the grouse (Tetraonidæ), the sand-grouse (Pteroclidæ), the Turnicidæ, the mound-makers (Megapodiidæ), the curassows and guans (Cracidæ), the Tinamous (Tinamidæ), altogether over 400 species and about fourscore genera, and including forms of high antiquity. Interesting analogies have been pointed out between this order of birds and the order of Ruminants among Mammals, in the complexity of the digestive organs, bulkiness of the frame, low intelligence, easy domestication, usefulness to man, and proneness to variation from the influence of external circumstances, giving rise to different breeds. See POULTRY, GROUSE, PHEASANT.