300 SHUFELDT, Skeleton of II 'edije- tailed Eacjle. [Tll^l^rli 



skull is appreciably smaller than that of the Wedge-tail ; but be- 

 yond this there are no conspicuous characters to distinguish them. 



Finally, upon critically comparing a skull of the White-headed 

 Eagle (Haliaetus I. leucocephahis, No. 19926, Coll. U.S. Nat. 

 Mus.) with the skull of the Wedge-tail sent me by Captain 

 White, I find that not only do the two skulls possess the same 

 length and width, but the characters in this part of the skeleton 

 of the two birds are almost identical. We find the nasal septum 

 perforated in the American bird, and not in the Wedge-tail ; but 

 there is reason to believe that the former was, to a degree, a sub- 

 adult specimen, and that perforation might have filled in with 

 age. 



Another interesting ])oint to be reckoned with is this : the de- 

 scending i)ost- frontal process in the White-headed Eagle is broad 

 and uniformly curved; in the skull of the Wedge-tail (White's 

 specimen) it is narrow, rather stout, and i)ointed ; but then, on 

 the other hand, this process in the skull of tlie Wedge-tail from 

 the Melbourne Museum agrees in all particulars with that apo- 

 physis in the White-headed Eagle here used in comparison. In 

 other words, with respect to this particular cranial character, it 

 ■does not agree in the crania of the two Wedge-tails, while in 

 the case of one of them it exactly agrees with the same cranial 

 character in the White-headed Eagle. 



Again, the cranium of the Wedge-tail from the Melbourne 

 Museum is wonderfully similar to the cranium of a Golden 

 Eagle in the United States National Museum (No. 1944S), and 

 resembles it more closely, character for character, than it does 

 the cranium of a bird of its own species sent by Captain White, 

 which, as stated above, more nearly agrees with a skull of the 

 White-headed Eagle. 



Turning to the base of the cranium of this Wedge-tailed Eagle, 

 we find the same thing existing. Each and all of the skeletal 

 characters there to be found are ty])ically a(|uiline. and as such 

 I have defined them in upwards of a dozen memoirs on the 

 osteology of these birds. 



Taking them up, character by character, the maxillo-palatines, 

 the palatines, the zygomas, the (juadrates. the rostrum, and the 

 bases of the cranium, T find the skull of Urooetus andax (R. 

 7338) sent me by the National Museum of Melbourne to agree 

 verv well in such a comparison with the skull of a Golden Eagle 

 (./.' chrysactos), Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 19443), while the 

 skull of" a Wedge-tail sent by Cai)tain White has those charac- 

 ters more as we find them in a skull of the White-headed Eagle 

 (No. 19926, Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus.). In this latter specimen I 

 find, at the base of the cranium, at their usual sites when present 

 in birds, diminutive, sharp-]iointed processes rciircscnling aborted 

 hasipteryijoid processes; these "prickles," as Parker used to call 

 them when they were non- functional and as rudimentary as 

 these, are entirely absent in the W'hite specimen of Uroaitus,hvLi 



