322 Prof. J. Reinhardt on the 



cerning tlie fossil l)ones of birds from the Brazilian limestone 

 caves ; and for this we are indebted, as we shall see, almost 

 exclusively to the late Dr. P. W. Lund. His collection of 

 animal-remains from these caves contains bones of birds 

 by hundreds, which he procured in the course of his long- 

 continued investigations. He was also for some time oc- 

 cupied in carefully examining them, and more than once 

 has mentioned in print these studies and their results, 

 though certainly with great brevity. At the conclusion of 

 the last of the letters which he addressed to the editors of 

 the ^Annales des Sciences Naturelles^ concerning his dis- 

 coveries in the caves, which is dated the 1st o£ April 1840, 

 and is printed in the May number of that periodical for 

 the same year, he stated that he possessed remains of a 

 not inconsiderable number of species of birds. But he did 

 not convey any more precise information respecting them, 

 beyond saying that amongst them were two Rheas, of which 

 one had been considerably larger than the now-existing Rhea 

 americana {I.e. p. 219). 



Early in 1841 Lund addressed to our Royal Society of 

 Sciences an account of the remains of birds which he had at that 

 time found and worked out. This paper was only of moderate 

 extent, filling twenty quarto pages in manuscript, with thir- 

 teen coloured drawings of six bones supposed to belong to 

 five different birds. It was intended to form the concluding 

 part of the fourth treatise (dated January 30, 1841, and for- 

 warded at the same time to the Society) of the series which 

 was then being pu.blished under the common title of ' Blik 

 paa Brasiliens Dyreverden for sidste Jordomvseltning ' 

 (Observations on the Animal World of Brazil before the last 

 Geological Revolution) . This paper was not, however, printed 

 along with the remaining portion of the treatise ; nor did he 

 ever decide to have it published afterwards. But he made an 

 abstract of the section concerning the birds, as well as of the 

 rest of the fourth treatise ; and this abstract, of which the 

 original manuscript is still in existence, was printed entire 

 and unaltered in the 'Proceedings^ of the Danish Royal Society 

 for 1840-41 (p. Ixiii) . From this we gather that at that time 



