No. 3] THE OSTEOLOGY OF THE PIGEONS. 489 



Professor Huxley, it is known, made a group, AlectoromorphcB, 

 to include the gallinaceous birds, including in it the Pteroclidce, 

 while another group, the PeristeromorphcB, was made to contain 

 the true columbine forms, including the extinct dodo {Didus). 

 Of these two groups Professor Huxley has said : " The rela- 

 tions of the P eristeromorphcB with the Alectoromorphcz are 

 very close. On the other side they seem to be allied with 

 the owls and the vultures" {P. S. Z., 1867, pp. 459, 460).! 



Newton, in speaking of the characters common to the gallina- 

 ceous birds and the pigeons, has said : " But peradventure the 

 real lesson taught by this aggregation of common characters is 

 rather the retention of the union of the Gallincp. and Colnmbce 

 into a single group, after the fashion of bygone years, under 

 the name, however meaningless, of Rasores. Failing that, the 

 general resemblance of most parts of the osteology of the Sand 

 grouse to that of the pigeons, so well shown by M. Milne- 

 Edwards, combined with their pigeon-like pterylosis, inclines 

 the present writer to group them as a suborder of Columbce ; 

 but the many important points in which they differ from the 

 more normal pigeons, especially in the matter of their young 

 being clothed with down, and their colored and speckled eggs, 

 must be freely admitted (art. "Ornithology," Encycl. Brit., 

 9th ed., Vol. XVHI, p. 46). 



Another classificatory view of this group has been taken by 

 Coues, who in the last edition of his " Key " remarks that 

 " the ColumbcB, as above indicated, are intended to be made 

 conformable to Huxley's P eristeromorphcB plus Pterocletes. 

 Assuming the imperfectly known extinct dodo, Didus inepttis, 



Engyptila, Melopelia, Columbigallina, and Scardafella. The collections at this 

 writing are especially weak in this group at the United States National Museum, 

 but I can gratefully acknowledge Mr. Lucas's kindness in having a specimen of 

 Starncenas cyanocephala skeletonized for me, and the loan of skeletons of the 

 Passenger pigeon {Ectopistes), now becoming so rare, and a fine skeleton of 

 Columbigallina passeritia, the interesting little Ground dove. 



1 In characterizing his Feristeromorphez, and referring to the sternum, Professor 

 Huxley says, " The stertnim has two posterior notches, the inner pair of which 

 may be converted into foramina. The external processes thus formed are, as in 

 the AlectoromorphcB, much shorter than the internal lateral processes " (loc. cit., 

 p. 459). Evidently it is meant here the "four posterior processes," and the 

 words external and internal have through a lapsus calami been transposed. 



