236 Annals of the Carnkgik Museum. 



in the succeeding vertebroe, to include the seventeenth. The articu- 

 lations among the second, third, fourth and forepart of the fifth are very 

 close, the zygapophyses l)eing short and thick, and no intervals 

 among the bones occur here. As we pass backwards however, the 

 postzygapophyses gradually lengthen, and meeting the short, elevated 

 prezygapophyses with their facets facing the median plane, large 

 lozenge-shaped vacuities occur down the chain as far as the thirteenth 

 vertebra. In the third and fourth vertebrae small interzygapophysial 

 foramina are present, one on either side. Among these vertebrae the 

 articulations of the centra are of the usual ornithic type, and the 

 elongated bodies of the fourth to the eleventh inclusive are flat both 

 ventrally and laterally. The twelfth cervical is very flat and broad on 

 its dorsal aspect, it there having the form of an arrow-head with the 

 point to the front, and the lateral projections being represented by 

 the postzygapophyses, with their facets under the ventro -posterior 

 sides. This condition is to some extent foreshadowed in the eleventh 

 vertebra, but quite disappears in the thirteenth. 



For the fore part of the skeleton of the neck, the neural canal is of 

 rather small calibre, particularly in the anterior end of the vertebrae, 

 but it gradually becomes larger as we approach the dorsal region. 



In the tenth to the eleventh inclusive, upon either sieie, we observe 

 a very delicate osseous loop passing backwards from the pleurapo- 

 physial part of the bone to the side of the centra of the same vertebra, 

 where it again co6.ssifies. These loops are inmiediately above the 

 lateral vertebral canal, and are absent in all the other vertebrae. We 

 find no such arrangement, however, in the skeleton of the neck among 

 these Ibises as we described for the Herons and Bitterns, any more 

 than is there in Tantalus. 



Omitting the twenty-second vertebra, the low neural spines of all 

 the dorsal vertebrae are completely fused together, as are the outer ex- 

 tremities of their diapophyses, the latter by strong and broad metapo- 

 physial coossified connecting bands. Haemal spines are present upon 

 the eighteenth and nineteenth dorsals, while the centra of the eigh- 

 teenth to the twenty-first inclusive are fused together in such a com- 

 plete manner that the ])oints of union are scarcely distinguishable. 

 The twenty-second vertebra possesses characters intermediate between 

 hose of the twenty-first and the anterior vertebra of the pelvic sacrum. 



If we omit perhaps the atlas, all the vertebrae of the cervico-dorsal 

 region of the spine with their ribs and haemajjophyses, as well as the 



