No. 2.] APHRIZA VIRGATA. 321 
hyals largely coalesce, but the ossification proceeds but a lim- 
ited distance into the glosso-hyal, which latter element in the 
adult is found to be in cartilage only. Thyro-hyals are notably 
slender and of considerable length ; they, too, being posteriorly 
tipped with cartilage throughout the life of the individual. 
Most Sandpipers possess a hyoidean apparatus similar to the 
one I have just described for Aphriza ; and, indeed, no material 
difference can be detected for the allied species from other 
groups.! 
Upon carefully examining the special ossifications of the ear 
in a skull of A. wrgata, I fail to detect anything worthy of 
detailed record ; the form of the stapedial plate and the coéssi- 
fied shaft of the columella have much the same pattern as 
we find these parts in the Fowl, and so clearly drawn for us 
by Parker.2. Dr. Streets, in preparing my skeletons of Aphriza 
for me, threw away the eye-balls, so I am unable to make any 
observations here upon the sclerotal plates in this species ; they 
have also been lost from my skeletons of Hematopus, the Turn- 
stones, and Plovers. 
This completes what I have to say here in reference to the 
comparative osteology of the skull and its associate parts of the 
skeleton in Afhriza virgata, and such deductions as may be 
drawn from the study the writer proposes to defer making until 
the closing paragraphs of the memoir are arrived at, when the 
skeleton as a whole, in this species, will be passed in review, and 
the proper comparisons made with the others we have been 
considering. 
Remainder of the Axial Skeleton. — Since the days that 
anatomists first took to counting the total number of vertebrz 
in the spinal column of any of our existing Carinate, there 
have been difficulties and differences upon that point; and 
as to the differences, these have been but multiplied by the 
many attempts that have been made to state exactly the num- 
1 Unfortunately the hyoid arches of both my specimens of Hematopus bachmani 
have been lost, and I am unable to add, by way of comparison, anything about them 
here. I am inclined to believe, however, that if any essential difference is to be 
hereafter detected in these arches for adult specimens of various representations of 
the Zimicole, it may be that some form will show a fusion of the first and second 
basibranchials ; but I look for nothing more than some such a difference as this, and 
even it may never be found to exist. 
* Parker, W. K., Morphology of the Skull, p. 258, Fig. 74, m.st. and st. 
