100 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Apteryx. 



Naturally, the kiwi remains constitute a large proportion 

 of the bones found. Once having entered the chasm, escape 

 was hopeless, and sooner or later his remains were added to 

 the mass. 



The majority of individuals seem to have been adults of the 

 two species still to be found in the fastnesses of the wild West 

 Coast, A. australis and A. oiccni. The remains of the two 

 species are easily distinguished, and, as the series of leg-bones 

 is much larger than any collection hitherto made, I have given 

 the measurements of all the perfect bones belonging to adult 

 individuals, in diagrammatic tables, which will show at once 

 the range of variation. The range of variation in the form 

 and size of the sternum is very interesting, and, within cer- 

 tain limits, exhibits many forms. 



The series bears out the new diagnostic character of the 

 anterior border of the corpus sterni proposed by Professor 

 Parker, in a paper on the development of the Apteryx* that 

 of the smaller species, A. oiccni, being sinuously, and of the 

 larger, A. australis, evenly, emarginate. Two of the larger 

 ones show distinct thickening m the median line, and in five 

 there is an irregular foramen on the right side of the post- 

 median process. 



Out of the fifty or sixty examples of A. australis I have not 

 noticed any variation in the number of facets for the ribs ; but 

 in the specimens of A. oiccni there are two in which only three 

 pairs were apparently attached. 



The postmedian process in A. oiccni seems to be always en- 

 tire, and rarely with any indication of a notch. In A. australis 

 the process is generally deeply divided in an irregular manner. 



Mr. Lydekker, in his " Catalogue of the Fossil Birds in the 

 British Museum" (1891), constitutes a new genus (Pscud- 

 aptcryx) from a solitary metatarsus from the Mantell collection, 

 " which corresponds to A. oiccni, with the exception that the 

 outer foramen above the tubercle for the tibialis anticus is 

 placed on a much lower level than the inner one, and there is 

 no depression on the anterior surface of the shaft, there is no 

 foramen in the groove between third and fourth trochlea^ but a 

 distinct channel above the groove." 



The material under notice enables one to definitely reject 

 the proposed genus, as I find that there are five metatarsals 

 which have no foramen in the groove between the third and 

 fourth trochlear. Of these, three are right and two are left. 

 No. 32237a, fig. 53a, p. 217, Brit, Mus. Cat., 1891— 

 Length, 59mm. 

 Width (prox.), 15mm. 



* Phil. Trans. R. S. of Loud., vol. clxxxii. b, p. 84. 



