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II. — On the Structure and Development of the Crows Skull. 
By W. K. Parker, F.K.S. 
{Read before the Royal Microscopical Society, October 2, 1872.) 
Plates XXXIV., XXXV., and XXXVI. 
Introductory Remarks. 
My first materials for working out this type of skull were obtained 
for me by our esteemed member, W. H. luce, Esq. Other speci- 
mens came to me from friends in different parts of the country, no 
few of these having been laid under contribution for hatched and 
unhatclied chicks of various birds. The Crow is the great sub- 
rational chief of the whole kingdom of the Birds; he has the 
largest brain ; the most wit and wisdom ; albeit, at times the 
cruellest of the birds of wing. He, or at least some of the secon- 
dary chieftains of his tribe, can speak with man’s voice, and, full of 
drollery and satire, make mockery of all and every of the many 
voices that are in the world. 
Half the known breeds that are, owe allegiance to the kingly 
Crow : of a full and literal myriad of feathered species, a good half 
are ennobled by Mr. Huxley’s title, namely, that high-sounding and 
yet hoarse name — “ Coracomorphse.” * This term — the Crow- 
form — is not to be taken as interchangeable with the name of the 
Crow family — “ Corvidae” — but as the expression of a sweeping 
generalization which gathers together from the very ends of the 
earth all those birds that have the same morphological characters 
as the Crow. Even birds that are to all intents and purposes 
Crows have to be broken up into many “ sub-families,” — there are 
the Northern and the Southern Crows; the Starlings, Choughs, 
Nutcrackers, Birds of Paradise, and a host of others ; all Crows, 
not, strictly speaking, “ Corvidae,” but “ Sturnidae,” “ Paradisaeidas,” 
and the like. 
Now the term “ Coracomorphae ” may be used to express such a 
general physiognomy as would make an ordinary observer say of a 
bird, “ That form reminds me of a Crow : ” such a remark would 
not be made concerning a Grouse, a Plover, or a Cormorant. 
But there underlies the visible form and fashion and colour of 
a living bird some modification of its plan of structure which is 
always the correlate of certain outward characters ; and an anato- 
mist familiar with the construction of the various types seldom 
makes a wrong guess as to what morphological group he will have 
to refer any new bird, when he has taken a good survey of its 
outward form. Professor Huxley, in the paper referred to, has 
seized hold of the great controlling portion of a bird’s structure, 
* See “On the Classification of Birds,” ‘ Proc. Zool. Soc.,’ 1867, pp. 415-472. 
