Q2 Shufeldt, Osteology of Harris's Cormorant. [ ^^f' 



Oct. 



on either side, and there called the siipramaxillavy. This bone 

 has probably been lost from the skulls of Nannopterum, but 1 

 find it present and well developed in the skull of a specimen of 

 P. atintus (" P. dilophns," No. 19,262, Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus.), 

 where it agrees with what we find in ,4 nhinga. It will un- 

 doubtedly be found to be present in other Cormorants, esi)ecially 

 in P. carbo, which species has a skull very much like that of P. 

 aitrihis — that is, the one referred to above. 



Nannopterum presents nothing peculiar in the sclerotals of the 

 eyes ; the platelets, with their rounded angles, number in either 

 circlet from 15 to 18 pieces. They overlap in the usual manner, 

 and the anterior ones are smaller somewhat than the posterior 

 one, the gradation from before, backward, being gradual. 

 (No. 19,628. — Antero-posterior diameter of inner circle equals 

 II millimeters and the outer 16 mm.) They agree in P. anritus, 

 but the eye is smaller than it is in Harris's Cormorant. 



Cormorants have the osseous elements of the tongue much 

 reduced ; some of its parts never ossify, as is the case with the 

 glosso-hyal, the uro-hyal, and the epi-hranchials. The basi-hyal 

 has a length of only 6 millimeters, it being wedge-shaped 

 anteriorly, and its sides prominently concaved with a mid- 

 longitudinal keel on its ventral aspect. In front it supports the 

 cartilaginous glosso-hyal. while posteriorly the long cerato-hranchials 

 articulate with it by their enlarged, laterally compressed anterior 

 extremities, side by side. There is no uro-hyal. Either of these 

 cerato-hranchials is a somewhat stoutish rodlet with a length of 

 48 millimeters. In form- they are somewhat cylindrical and very 

 slightly curved upward, their distal tips being in cartilage, which 

 latter may represent the epi-hyal elements. 



In P. anritus the osseous parts of the hyoidean apparatus are 

 slenderer than they are in Nannopterum, the basi-hyal being much 

 pressed from side to side in its continuity, while the cerato-branchials 

 are very much more curved from before, backwards ; otherwise 

 they agree, anatomically, with what has been described above 

 for Harris's Cormorant, and very probably other members of the 

 Phalacrocoracidce . 



The Skeleton of the Trunk. 



As stated above. Dr. Gadow, in his paper on Harris's Cormorant 

 in the Novitates Zoologicce, recorded many measurements he made 

 of the bones of Cormorants. Among them (" Table A," p. 171) 

 he gives the length of the trunk skeleton in N annopteriim harrisi 

 as 240 milhnieters. This must have been a much larger bird 

 than any of those I now have before me ; for in the case of the 

 two largest ones, this part of the skeleton, measuring from the 

 most anterior point on the 19th cervical vertebra to the most 

 posterior one on the last uro-sacral vertebra — or the last one fused 

 with the sacrum — I hnd the length to be; in both cases, but 

 199 millimeters. 



Fearing that I might have made some error with respect to the 



