Mr. W. K. Parker on Palamedea Chavaria. 145 
“ornithic” height above the Ostriches, and ina very similar contiguity 
to the Lizards: these are the true ‘“Gallinee”’ and the true “ Ana- 
tine.” In the latter family we have all the birds from the Spur- 
winged Goose (Plectropterus) to the Goosander, inclusive; in the 
former, the “ Phasianinze”’ and the “ Tetraoninee’’—the typical and 
subtypical Fowls. The Flamingo is truly lamedlirostral; but its 
anatine characters are confused and mixed up with those that are 
derived from the Ibis and the Crane. Again, in the Fowls, we have 
carefully to keep the ‘‘ Cracinze,” the ‘‘ Hemipodiine,”’ the ‘“‘ Mega- 
podiinze,”’ and the ‘ Pteroclinee’’ in separate circles, because the 
woof of their nature is one thing, and the warp another; they are not 
zoologically pure, not wholly Gallinaceous. The parts first formed 
in the embryonic skull—those which are most central, and least and 
most slowly affected by the causes that fit each creature for its place 
and work in nature—these are strangely alike in both the “ Sifters” 
and the “Scrapers’’; and for a long while this fact has been a 
mystery and almost a paradox to me. I care very little for the webs 
between the toes; their absence or presence may suffice to separate 
between genus and genus, but not between family and family, still 
less between order and order. 
The water-birds may, however, be divided very easily into two 
groups by the presence or absence of two very curious membranous 
spaces appearing in the occipital plane. These fontanelles separate 
the auditory from the superoccipital cartilage,—and are scarcely open 
at all in the true ‘ Ardeine,” the ‘ Ralline,” the “ Podicipine,” 
and the “ Pelecaninz ’’; nor do they appear in the Land and Tree 
groups of birds. 
In the ‘ Ibidinz,’’ the ‘‘ Lamellirostres,’’ the Gruine, Pluvialine, 
and Tringine groups, they are large and persistent ; in the “ Larinee”’ 
they soon fill up with bone, and so they do in Gdicnemus, and ap- 
parently in the Bustards. Nowthe great embryological distinctions 
between the skull and face of the Geese and Fowls are, first, that in 
the latter the space between the periotic mass and the supercccipital 
cartilage is a mere chink, in the latter a persistent oval space; and 
secondly that the anterior parts of the face, viz. the preemaxillee, pre- 
vomers, and dentaries are small and compressed in the Fowls, large 
and outspread in the sifting birds. The body of the tongue par- 
takes of the general expansion of the face in the Geese ; the descend- 
ing part of the lachrymal suffers from the general contraction of the 
parts in the face of the Fowl. Moreover the true Fowls (‘‘ Phasia- 
nine ”’ and “ Tetraonine”’) have the head of the os quadratum less 
bifid at its joint with the skull, and therefore nearer the Ostriches 
and reptiles in its structure than the same bone in the Goose-tribe. 
It is highly worthy of remark, however, that the Sand-Grouse, He- 
mipodii, Megapodes, and Curassows all agree with the Geese and 
their allies in having a subornithic condition of this famous bone ; 
and its upper articular crura begin to be quite distinct representatives 
of the legs of the mammalian ‘‘incus.”’ This, be it noticed, makes 
the four groups of mixed ‘‘ Gallinee”’ correspond, not only with the 
Lamellirostres, but also with all those puzzling border-birds which 
Amn. & Mag. N. Hist. Serv. 3. Vol. xiv. 10 
