18 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



long, open slits, and there is no osseous septum narium. Phalaropes 

 are typically schi/.orhinal birds, and their skulls are characterized by 

 having a deep longitudinal median depression over the region of the 

 cranio-facial axis, upon either side of which the upper portion of the 

 small lacrymal is prominently tipped up. Below, this bone sends 

 down a thread-like osseous limb, which bending smartly backwards, 

 fuses by its posterior extremity with the upper and outer angle of the 

 rather large and (quadrilateral pars plana. Nasal bones and the 

 zygomge are straight and very slender. On the superior aspect of the 

 cranium, the frontal region is seen to be extremely narrow between 

 the superior margins of the orbits ; the fronto-parietal region is 

 rounded and smooth. Further back there is a fairly well marked 

 superoccipital prominence, which in the Red Phalarope is pierced 

 upon either side by a foramen, which is not the case in P. lobatus. 

 Both the anterior wall of the brain-case and the interorbital septum 

 are very deficient in bone. Into the last open space there is thrown 

 backwards from the posterior margin of the mesethmoid a free, hori- 

 zontal, and very slender spur of bone. On the lateral aspect of the 

 skull we find the post-frontal and squamosal processes, especially the 

 latter, to lie inconspicuous spinelets of bone. At the base of the 

 cranium the foramen magnum is large and of a cordate outline ; the 

 basitemporal region beyond it being somewhat contracted. 



The pterygoids are short, small, and vertically compressed, and they 

 articulate, as in all true limicoline birds, with the basi-pterygoid pro- 

 cesses of the sphenoid. Their palatine heads are separated in the middle 

 line as are the palatines for much of their length behind. These latter 

 bones have extremely narrow prepalatine portions, widely apart an- 

 teriorly, and behmi the naso-maxillary junction fusing with the maxillo- 

 palatine plate, upon either side. Posteriorly, their postero-external 

 angles are rounded off, while their descending internal and external 

 margins are prominent and keel-like. In the middle line in front they 

 merge to form a spiculiform point, which coossifies with the broadish, 

 thin, lamellar vomer, which latter terminates in a free blunt apex an- 

 teriorly. 



Either maxillo-palatine is of an oval outline, scroll-like and lamelli- 

 form in structure, with a great perforation existing in it, which absorbs 

 its entire central portion, leaving barely more than the rim of the bone. 

 These maxillo-palatine processes are well separated from each other in 

 the middle space, and they neither of them come in contact with any 

 of the adjacent bones, as the vomer, or palatines. 



