142 On the Tarsus and Caiyus of Birds. 



others, while admitting the existence of three carpal bones, 

 one of which, the magnum, unites with the base of the mid- 

 metacarpal, says, in his last work on the Comparative 

 Anatomy of the Vertebrates,* that the tarsus is absent, or 

 perhaps blended with the tibia or metatarsus. In speak- 

 ing of the term tarso-meiatarse, as applied by some orui- 

 thotomists to the segment sustaining the phalanges, he says 

 it implies the tarsal homology of the epiphysis, and adds 

 that the same might be predicable of the distal epiphy- 

 sis of the tibia ; but neither of these points being demon- 

 strated, he prefers to call that segment the metatarse. 



Still later, in the year 1869, in a memoir on the Fossil 

 Reptiles of the Liassic Formation,! he strongly insists upon 

 calling the tarsal bones of birds, epiphyses. 



Admitting, as Prof. Owen does, the excessive tendency 

 in the skeleton of birds to anchyloses, and further admitting 

 the interesting correspondence between the wing and the 

 leg, in the coalescence of the metacarpals and metatarsals 

 respectively, and also admitting the confluence of the mag- 

 num with the proximal end of the mid-metacarpal, it seems 

 strange, indeed, that he could not have interpreted the so- 

 called epiphyses of the til^ia and metatarsals as true tarsal 

 ossicles ; or, having interpreted them as epiphyses, that the 

 same mode of reasoning should not have led him to regard 

 the magnum as an epiphysis also. 



Mr. W. K. Parker, in a valuable paper on the osteology 

 of Baloeniceps rex,X suggests the existence of a tarsal bone, 

 in describing the tibia of that bird, as follows : "This infe- 

 rior, or distal end of the tibia is developed from a distinct 

 osseous centre in young birds, which piece forms all the 

 articular parts, and sends upward a wedge-shaped process 

 in front — the seat of the ossification which makes the large, 

 wide, oblique, tendon-like bridge. 



*Vol. II, 11. 79. t Palreontographical Soc, Vol. XXIII, part II, p. 77. 

 X Zoological Traus., Vol. IV, part 7, 1861. 



