50 VULTURID&. 
Or 
collected before the year 1793, and which was afterwards 
transferred, with the rest of his anatomical collections, to 
the Royal College of Surgeons. The second ornitholite 
(fig. 233) is in the museum of James S. Bowerbank, Esq., 
F.R.S. Ihave since been favoured with the view of the 
sternum of another species of bird from the eocene clay 
near Primrose Hill, through the kindness of N. T. We- 
therell Esq.; and Mr. Kénig has published a figure of 
the fossil cranium of a bird from Sheppey, in the last part 
of his ‘ Leones Fossiles Sectiles. 
The Hunterian fossil includes, with the mutilated ster- 
num ss’, the sternal ends of the two coracoid bones ¢ ¢, 
a dorsal vertebra v, the lower end of the left femur /, 
the proximal end of the corresponding tibia ¢, portions 
of two other long bones, and a few fragments of the slender 
ribs; all of which are cemented together by the grey in- 
durated clay usually attached to Sheppey fossils. 
The entire keel, and the posterior and right margins of 
the sternum, are broken away; but the obvious remains 
of the origin of the keel, and the length of the sternum, 
forbid a reference of the fossil to the Struthious or strictly 
terrestrial order. The lateral extent and convexity of 
the body of the sternum, the presence and course of 
the secondary intermuscular ridges, 7, and the commence- 
ment of the keel close to the anterior border of the ster- 
num, remove the fossil from the Brachypterous family of 
web-footed birds, and lead us to a comparison of the 
fossil with the corresponding parts of the skeleton in the 
ordinary birds of flight. 
Sufficient of the sternum remains for the rejection of 
the Gallinacea, and those Grallatorial and Passerine birds 
which have that bone deeply incised; and the field of 
comparison is thus restricted to such species as have the 
