PS1TTACI 271 



Mr. PARSONS and I have pointed out certain likenesses 

 between Stringops, the Cacatuinas of GARBOD, and Nestor, 

 which he places in an altogether different family. These 

 partly concern the syrinx, to which attention has been 

 already directed, partly the muscular system. In those birds 

 the posterior deltoid is larger than the anterior. It may be 

 noted also that powder-down patches are best developed and 

 more universal among the Cacatuinse, while it is in that 

 family only that the gall bladder exists. 



Of extinct parrots among the most remarkable is Lopliopsitta- 

 cus mauritianus, 1 characterised, as was also Nccropsittacus rodcri- 

 canus, by its enormous jaws. 



The principal interest attaching to other remains of parrots is 

 the light that they throw upon the former distribution of the 

 group ; for Psittacus has been found in the lower Miocene of 

 France. 



The determination of the affinities of the parrots to other 

 groups of birds is one of the hardest problems in ornithology. 

 They have been likened to the Accipitres (mainly, perhaps, 

 on account of the hooked beak and its cere), and to the 

 gallinaceous birds, in the neighbourhood of which they were 

 placed by GARROD. It seems to me that the parrots, like 

 the cuckoos, are a group of birds which are on the border- 

 land between the Aiiomalogonatee and the higher birds. It is 

 remarkable what a number of points there are in which they 

 show resemblances to the Passeres the complicated muscu- 

 lature of the syrinx, the absence of biceps slip and expansor 

 secundariorum, the presence of a cucullaris propatagialis, 

 found in the Passeres and in the somewhat passeriform 

 Upnpa and Pici, the small number of cervical vertebrae, the 

 total want of ca3ca, allying them not certainly to the Passeres 

 but again to the Pici and many Anomalogonatee, the reduced 

 clavicles of some genera. Zygodactyle feet, moreover, are 

 not found among the higher birds except in the Cuculi and 



1 Sir E. NEWTON and H. GADOW, ' On Additional Bones of the Dodo and 

 other Extinct Birds of Mauritius,' &c., Tr. Zool. Soc. xiii. p. 281. See also for 

 a figure and account of this bird NEWTON'S Diet. Birds, sub voce 'Ex- 

 termination.' 



