indicated by a thinning of the bone. The rudiments of tuberosities for the attachment of the missing furcula are often fairly evident. The coraco-scapular angle oscillated between 150 and 122. There is a supracoracoid foramen.

In the pelvis there is no fusion between ilium, ischium, and pubis. The pectineal process is long and appears to be ossified equally by pubis and ilium. In the skeleton of the adult foot two of the tarsals are present as free bones not fused with either the tibia or the metatarsus; these are, according to T. J. PARKER, two centralia.

The bones of the wing in the struthious birds are especially reduced in the emu, cassowary, and Apteryx.

The wing of the adult emu (Dromaus ater) has been figured and described by PARKER. There is no trace of a separate carpus either in young or adult. In a six-weeks-old chick the first metacarpal is half the length of the second, but in the adult it is reduced to a small prominence not a third of its length. There is no trace of a third metacarpal. The single finger (the index) has three phalanges and a long strong claw. The wings of an adult are about the size of those of a jay or a bower bird; in the young chick, with legs the size of those of a turkey, the wings are no longer than a wren's.'

In Apteryx the wing is in some respects further reduced than that of the emu; in others less so. In the adult 4. australis (T. J. PARKER) there are no distinct carpals, but a broad flattened carpo-metacarpus, with traces of being composed of three metacarpals. There are sometimes two and sometimes three phalanges-the last clawed--to the single finger (index); where one is atrophied it is the second. In A. Oweni there appears to be invariably a distinct radiale; the third metacarpal is more distinct than in the last species, and in one case was entirely free. The clawed index has two or three phalanges. The single example of A. Haasti which PARKER examined had an ulnare as well as a radiale in the carpus, a fairly distinct metacarpale III., and three phalanges to the index.

In A. Bulleri the manus shows much greater variations;

in one specimen a radiale is present in the carpus, in another a bone which appears to represent radiale and distal carpals; this specimen had a free third metacarpal. In two other instances there is a carpo-metacarpus, as in A. australis. There are two or three phalanges and, as always, a claw to the index.

The development of the manus of Apteryx shows plainly what is also apparent from its adult structure, that it is in a condition of degeneration. Traces of three distal carpals, as well as of radiale and ulnare, are visible; all the metacarpals are distinct, the third being as long as the second and having a rudimentary phalanx.

The Epyornithidæ, containing the type genus Epyornis and a recently established new genus, Mullerornis,1 was for some time only known by the subfossil egg and by the bones of the hind limb. More recently Messrs. MILNEEDWARDS and GRANDIDIER, and more recently again Mr. C. W. ANDREWS, have described other parts of the skeleton, so that now, though there are still many lacunæ, we have a fair knowledge of several important parts of the skeleton. This family is limited to Madagascar, where its remains have been found chiefly in marshes.

The skull is only incompletely known-the palate, for instance, so important in determining its affinities, is quite unknown-being only represented by what is little more than a calvaria, and by an imperfect mandible. The occipital condyle is pedunculate, as in the moas. The frontal region of the skull is covered by many pits, which are arranged in a fairly regular fashion; it is suggested that these may be the marks of the inplantation of feathers, of which, therefore, the Epyornis may have possessed a frontal crest-a feature which has also been observed in certain moas. There are also, as in the moas, a prominent basi-temporal platform,

1

'Observations sur les pyornis de Madagascar,' Comptes Rend. exviii. 1894, p. 122; Sur les Ossements d'Oiseaux,' &c., Bull. Mus. Nat. Hist. 1895, p. 9; On the Skull, Sternum, and Shoulder Girdle of Epyornis,' Ibis (7), ii. p. 376; On some Remains of Epyornis in the British Museum,' P. Z. S. 1894, p. 108.

an open Eustachian groove, and a similar structure of the articular facet for the quadrate.

The sternum is singular by its extraordinary breadth and great shortness; the length in the middle line is only one-fifth of the greatest breadth. The hinder border is not notched, but forms a gently concave curve.' The anterolateral processes are stout. There is, of course, no keel. The coraco-scapula is typically ratite, the angle between

FIG. 251.-SHOULDER GIRDLE OF Epyornis (AFTER ANDREWS).
se, scapula; pc, procoracoid; f.spc, foramen supracoracoideum; gl, glenoid cavity.

the two being very slight. As will be seen from the figure, it most resembles that of Casuarius. The bird had a rudimentary humerus.

Dinornithidæ. This family consists of a number of genera, all New Zealand in habitat; their remains are so abundant in various parts of the country that they must have existed in countless numbers. That there should have

been within so limited an area at least twenty-five distinct species is explained by Captain Hutton by the view that at one time the two islands of New Zealand were divided up into a greater number-an archipelago, in fact-the result of this being what we now see among the cassowaries, where each of the islands inhabited by them has its own peculiar species, isolation, indeed, permitting of the specialisation. All the moas, however, became extinct at a period not less than three or four hundred years ago. T. J. PARKER,' whose work on the cranial osteology of the group is the most recent, allows the genera Dinornis, Pachyornis, Mesopteryx, Anomalopteryx, Emeus, and probably Megalapteryr, distributed among three subfamilies. The moas-a general term applied to all these genera-were birds of fair, often large, size. The smaller species ranged from 2 to 4 feet in height; the largest were at least thirteen feet high.

The skull of the moas had a short and wide beak. The occipital condyle is remarkable on account of its 'more or less pedunculate character,' a circumstance which is of importance in considering the relationship to the moas of the Madagascar Epyornis (see p. 522).

The orbit is smaller than in other struthious birds. The nasals are peculiar in that they meet behind above the ethmoid, so that no part of the latter bone appears on the upper surface of the skull. It is only in the adult cassowary among recent struthious birds that the ethmoid is entirely hidden on a superficial view, a state of affairs which is brought about by the development of the crest, and does not exist in the young bird. The palate is like that of the emu and cassowary, but is most like that of Apteryx.

The nasal bone is furnished with a slender maxillary process, or, as in emus, there is a corresponding bone separately ossified. The lacrymal is firmly ankylosed to frontal; its descending process joins ectethmoid. T. J. PARKER has figured and described a peculiar thin scroll-like bone which appears on a lateral view of the skull and pro

On the Cranial Osteology, Classification, and Phylogeny of the Dinornithide,' Tr. Z. S. xiii. p. 373.

jects beyond the anterior margin of the maxillo-nasal; this he has termed the alinasal.

The number of cervical vertebræ is large, at any rate in Anomalopteryx parva, the only species in which they are all without doubt preserved. There are in this bird twentyone. The sternum is longish and rather narrow in Anomalopteryx casuarina; it is short and broad in Dinornis maximus. In all it has a pair of lateral notches strongly marked; the lateral processes are strongly divergent. There is also a median posterior notch.

The pectoral girdle is but little known, and appears sometimes to have been completely absent.

In the pelvis the bones are separate and the pectineal process but little marked.

That the feathers have large aftershafts, like the emu, &c., was first discovered by the late Mr. DALLAS. Sir R. OWEN has figured the ossified rings of the trachea; but they present no special features of interest.

As to their relationships with other ratites, T. J. PARKER is of opinion that they form, together with the Apteryx and cassowaries, a definite branch of the struthious tree, as in the annexed diagram, which is from his paper. FÜRBRINGER comes to conclusions which are not greatly different. The relations of the Dinornithidae to Struthio and Rhea are 'ganz entfernt,' to Dromæus and Casuarius 'fern,' but to Apteryx nahe.'

6

There is no doubt that Struthio is removed far from the Dinornithidæ, as well as from other ratites, by the structure of its palate, which diverges much. But it not clear that Rhea is so remote; the existence of an apparent homologue of the maxillo-nasal bone, to which I have referred in the description of the skull of Rhea, is a point of somewhat striking likeness to Emeus, while the conformation of the skull generally in Rhea does not seem to divide it very deeply from Casuarius, &c. Though no doubt T. J. PARKER is right in directing attention to the special resemblances in the skulls of Apteryx and the Dinornithidae, it must not be 1 On the Feathers of Dinornis robustus,' OWEN, P. Z. S. 1865, p. 265.