SHUI'F.LDi' : UsiE()LO(;V OK THK LlMICOL^. 19 



This plan of structure is, as we know, what Huxley has termed the 

 sthizognathous type, and it is characteristic, as we have seen, of the 

 first three suborders of birds treatetl in former memoirs, as it is of 

 se\eral others. 



A quadrate bone in one of these Phalaropes is very pneumatic, as is 

 indeed most of the rest of the skull, and it has a double mastoidal head, 

 with a conspicuous orbital process, and a small internal mandibular 

 facette, separated by a valley from a larger oblicjue external one upon 

 its same aspect. The bony meatus of the ear is very open, and in P. 

 lobatiis permits a view along the entire length of the eustachian tube to 

 its anterior exit. 



In the eyeballs the sclerotal ])lates are small, and the bones of the 

 hyoidean arches are slender. 



Long and of an acutely V-shaped pattern, the mandible has com- 

 paratively rather an extensive s\mphysis, and from it behind, in the 

 median line, may project directly l)ackwards a delicate spine. Either 

 ramus is rather shallow in the vertical direction, and is pierced by a 

 slit-like " ramal vacuity," exposing the presence of the s])lenial 

 element of the jaw. The angular processes are lamellar in structure, 

 and inclined somewhat to hook upwards. They are by no means in- 

 conspicuous in P. lobatus. 



\Vith respect to the characters of the remainder of the skeleton, they 

 may well be seen in a specimen of the species I have just named. I 

 find twenty-one free vertebrae in its spinal column before arriving at the 

 pelvis. Counting from the skull, the fourteenth vertebra supports a pair 

 of tiny free ribs, while those on the fifteenth are considerably longer, 

 though they do not reach the sternum, there being no costal ribs for 

 them. There are six pairs of true vertebral ribs, all being very deli- 

 cately constructed, as are their long slender unciform processes. The 

 haemapophyses of the one pair of pelvic ribs do not reach the sternum, 

 and there is a tiny ' ' floating ' ' pair of the former kind behind them. 



The dorsal vertebrae fit very closely together in their articulations, 

 and their metapophyses are notably long. 



"W^Q pelvis is a very thin, light, and open structure. Anteriorly, the 

 iliac margins are rounded off in front, and these bones do not meet 

 over the crista of the sacrum. The parial foramina, two rows upon 

 either side of the middle line of the bone, are large and open among 

 the lateral processes of the fused vertebrae of the sacrum, lending to 

 the pelvis a peculiarly frail appearance, already noted above. At the 



