Fossil Birds in the Marsh Collection of Yale University 65 



goose. In the paper just named, on Plate XXV, Figures 304 and 

 305, a fossil carpo-metacarpus of Branta canadensis and the same bone 

 from a skeleton of the existing species are compared. These I have 

 also compared with the present material and with B. c. occidentalis 

 (No. 18609. Coll. U. S. Nat. Mus.), and they all practically agree. 

 I hardly think one would be justified in considering that this material 

 now at hand represented a new species of the Canada Goose, much 

 less that it came from a specimen of the subspecific form— that is, 

 C. c. occidentalis. 



Personally, I can only regard this fossil material as representing the 

 remains of a specimen of Branta canadensis, especially as it came from 

 the Post Pliocene of California, and we now know that the bird occurred 

 in the avifauna of the Pleistocene formation of Oregon. 



Grus haydeni Marsh. 

 {Plate VIII, Fig. 67; Plate II, Fig. 21.) 



Marsh, Amer. Joum. Sci., ser. 2, XLIX, 1870, 214. 



Holotype. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Niobrara River, 

 Nebraska. ? Pleistocene. F. V. Hayden, collector. 



Cat. No. 860, Peabody Museum, Yale University. Grizzly Buttes, Wyoming. 

 ? Pleistocene. O. Harger, collector. 



Professor Marsh gives a detailed description in his article of the 

 distal end of a left tibia, which is broken and badly chipped, but which 

 is, nevertheless, from the skeleton of an extinct Crane of the genus 

 Grus, and very properly named Grus haydeni after its discoverer, Dr. 

 F. V. Hayden. 



In the collection of Yale University I find another distal end of a 

 left tibio-tarsus, which is more or less perfect. It is in a better con- 

 dition than the Philadelphia Academy type specimen in some respects, 

 of which it is almost a counterpart, only being darker in color. This 

 specimen likewise represents Grus haydeni. 



The type of Grus proavus appears to have been lost, as it is not in 

 the Yale Collection nor in that of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia. (Marsh, Amer. Joum. Sci., ser. 3, IV, 1872, 261.) 

 Pleistocene, New Jersey. 



Marsh said of it: "An extinct species of Crane, somewhat smaller 

 than Grus canadensis, Temm., is indicated in the collections of the 

 Yale Museum by a nearly perfect sternum, a femur, and a few other 

 less important remains, which are probably all parts of the same 

 skeleton." 



This material I have never seen. 



