324 Prof. J. Rciiihardt 07i the 



was at once published in the ' Institut ' *. After having dis- 

 cussed the fossil birds from other geological formations, he 

 briefly mentions in this resume the remains of birds from the 

 Brazilian caves, and the scientific results of Lund's reseai'ches, 

 at the same time increasing the number of species indicated 

 by Lund, by some more discovered in a collection of Bra- 

 zilian cave-bones which the Paris Museum at that time 

 purchased from the late P. Claussen. The number of new 

 species indicated by him, however, is only five ; but he does 

 not further describe them, and some of them had been 

 most likely found by Lund without Gervais being aware 

 of it. A species of Cathartes, however, larger than those now 

 existing t, and an Owl were, if the determinations may be 

 trusted, really new. 



In the short section on extinct birds in Mr. Wallace's cele- 

 brated 'Geographical Distribution of Animals ' there is, lastly, 

 what we might think was a small addition to the fossil birds 

 already known from the Brazilian bone-caves, because, in the 

 few lines which the author has bestowed on this subject, we 

 meet with the somewhat startling announcement that amongst 

 the birds found in these caves there is also an extinct species 

 of " the very isolated South-American genus Opist ho comics " 

 (i. p. 164). On closer consideration, however, this statement 

 can scarcely appear otherwise than doubtful J. Wallace does 

 not seem to have himself seen or studied the bird-bones to 

 which he refers ; and, judging from the tenor of his words, it 



* Vol. xii. (1844), pp. 294, 295. I am not aware that any more of this 

 memoir than the resume has been published. 



t In Lund's palseontological collection I have not observed remains of 

 any Cathartes or Catharistes " larger than the existing species ;" but 

 amongst the bones of birds collected by him during the last years of his 

 cave-diggings there are the upper mandible and some more bones of a 

 Gypcujus nearly allied to or even identical with the now living G. papa. 

 Perhaps this is the bird which Gervais denominates a Cathartes, to \Yhich 

 genus Illiger, by whom it was established, referred G, papa"^\h.ich. is fur- 

 nished with a crest, as well as those American Vultures which have no 

 excrescences on the beak. 



\_X That this statement seems to have originated in a mistake has been 

 already noticed (Encycl. Brit. ed. 9, xii. p. 29). — Ed.] 



