No. 2.] APHRIZA VIRGATA. 319 
palatines, each turns outward as it articulates with the anterior 
end of the corresponding pterygoid ; nor do these palatine heads 
meet each other in the medium plane. With this common fea- 
ture, Afhriza agrees ; but when we come to examine the postero- 
external angles of these bones, we find them obliquely truncated 
in our subject, or at least the hinder ends of the palatines them- 
selves thus obliquely truncated, forming obtuse postero-external 
angles, which angles are rounded off in Actztus, Charadrius, and 
in Avenaria, while in Hematopus a moderate, backward-extend- 
ing and rounded process is found at their site. In this latter 
species, too, the internal and external laminz of a palatine bone 
are very conspicuous, as they are, though less so, in the Surf- 
bird, Spotted Sandpiper, and the Black Turnstone. Plovers have 
this character much subdued. Mesiad, the superior and at the 
same time, internal borders of the palatines, beyond the “ptery- 
goidal processes,” along the rostrum, come in contact with each 
other in all of the enumerated species; and in all completely 
fuse anteriorly with the hinder limbs of the vomerine bifurca- 
tion. Coalescence, again, is most thorough in all these forms 
among the anterior ends of the palatines and those parts of the 
maxillaries and premaxillaries with which they come in contact, 
upon either side (Fig. 2). From this description, then, of the 
palatines, it is clear that A. virgata possesses them in a form 
essentially its own, and further that the pattern varies in all the 
allied groups or species. 
Not so, however, is this altogether the case with the maxzllo- 
palatines. One of these in Aphriza virgata is seen to be a 
shell-like process; extending backwards, concave externally ; 
the reverse being the case upon its mesial aspect ; perforated by 
a few foramina; and finally, xot unzted along its inferior border 
with the palatine of the same side which extends beneath it. 
Charadrius also possesses a maxillo-palatine almost identical 
with this, and in the last-named feature, the true Sandpipers 
also agree, but in these latter birds the bone is much narrower 
and more curved. 
Passing to the Oyster-catchers and Turnstones, a very different 
state of affairs is to be met with; for in Hematopus, for instance, 
we find a maxillo-palatine to be quite a thick, laterally compressed 
and unperforated lamina of bone, which completely fuses with 
the corresponding palatine for the entire length of tts inferior 
