Fossil Birds in the Marsh Collection of Yale University 71 



Phasianus alfhild^ sp. nov. 



(Plale XII, Figs. 79, 81, 85 and 86.) 



Holotype. Cat. No. 947, Peabody Museum, Yale University. Haj'stack Mt., 

 Wyoming. Light colored clay, 100 feet below the horizon of Haystack Butte. J. 

 Heisey, collector. 



This lot, though in three parcels, was apparently all found in the 

 same locality. Such matrix as is attached to the bones is rather hard 

 and somewhat flinty, but may be easily dissolved, leaving the speci- 

 men in the clear and entire. 



One lot contains fragments of some small bones (vertebrate) that 

 cannot well be made out; it consists of several small pieces. Lot No. 

 2, similar to the last, has one small piece about an inch square, and a 

 fragment of a bone in the clear. In the matrix there is the distal 

 end of a left tarso-metatarsus of a bird, while the free piece is the prox- 

 imal extremity of the same bone of the skeleton — also bird. It is 

 probable that they are parts of the same bone with the middle portion 

 of the shaft missing. They belonged apparently to some tetraonine 

 form of a size about equal to that of the Ring-necked Pheasant. 



Passing to the third and last lot, I find it to consist of some 34 pieces 

 of shafts of long bones which all belonged, there is good reason to be- 

 lieve, to birds of perhaps several species. This opinion is sustained by 

 the fact that, associated with these, I find some 36 more fragments of 

 bones, which, with perhaps no more than two or three exceptions, cer- 

 tainly belonged to birds, ranging in size from that of the Passenger 

 pigeon (Ectopistes .migrator ins) to that of an Eagle as big as our White- 

 headed species (Haliceetus I. leucocephalns), the first being represented 

 by a single cervical vertebra and the latter by a part of a toe-joint 

 (PI. XII, Fig. 89). 



Finally, in this same lot there occurs the distal ends of two (right 

 and left) tarso-metatarsi ; the distal end of a right humerus, and the 

 upper extremity of a left coracoid. These bones, I must believe, all 

 belonged to the same individual (adult). I have most carefully com- 

 pared them with the corresponding bones in a skeleton of Phasianus 

 colchius (ad. cf Coll. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 19293), and they are in 

 very close agreement with them. So much is this the case that there 

 is no question but that they belonged to a true Pheasant of a size about 

 equal to the species just named and closely related to it. (PI. XII, 

 Figs. 78-81.) 



This Pheasant is now extinct and heretofore undescribed, and I 



