Fossil Birds in the Marsh Collection of Yale University 31 



This fragment of a tarso-metatarsus belonged to a Grus, about 

 one-third smaller than Grus canadensis, and to that genus it should be 

 relegated as Grus nobilis (Marsh.) 



Aletornis pernix Marsh. 

 {Plate VI, Fig. 47.) 



Marsh, Amer. Joum. Sci., ser. 3, IV, 1872, 256. 



Holotype. Cat. No. 64, Peabody Museum, Yale University. Henry's Fork, 

 Wyoming. Eocene (Bridger). O. C. Marsh, collector. 



As will be observed by referring to Figure 47 of Plate VI, Marsh made 

 this species of his genus Aletornis on eighteen bits of fossil bones, of 

 which only one very imperfect fragment can be recognized as ha\dng 

 belonged to a bird. It is the external condyle of a left tarso-meta- 

 tarsus of some bird of medium size. The remaining seventeen bits are 

 not recognizable. No one can tell from such material as this what 

 kind of a bird it represents, and the characters Marsh enumerates for 

 the end of the tarso-metatarsus are those to be found in a great many 

 different kinds of birds, belonging to entirely di^erent families. 



Not only is it impossible to correctly determine what kind of a bird 

 these little scraps of bone belonged to in life, but there is far less 

 ground for announcing that it was a species belonging in his genus 

 Aletornis — a genus already containing a Woodcock (?), a Sandpiper 

 (?) and a Crane. 



Aletornis venustus IVIarsh. 

 {Plate VI, Fig. 41.) 



Marsh, Amer. Journ. Sci., ser. 3, IV, 1872, 257. 



Holotype. Cat. No. 206, Peabody Museum, Yale University. Henry's Fork, 

 Wyoming. Eocene (Bridger). G. M. Keasbey, collector. 



Also: Cat. No. 1027, Peabody Museum, Yr.le University. Henry's Fork, 

 Wyoming. Eocene (Bridger). J. W. Chew, collector. 



The determination of this species rests upon a perfect distal portion 

 of a left tibio-tarsus. It is from a bird of about the size of a Coot 

 or GaUinule (Fulica gall inula), and I believe it belonged to some 

 paludicoHne bird. 



In ''The Fossil Birds of North America" (The A. O. U. Check-List 

 of North American Birds, 3d ed., p. 384), the genus Aletornis has 

 been placed in the ''Order Paludicol^." Now the bird to the 

 skeleton of which this fossil bone belonged was a paludicoline species 

 of some kind or another. The characters it presents are identical as 



