Contributions to Bird-Anatomy and Classification. 27 



The other group, the Mesomyodi, have the intrinsic mus- 

 cles (which are usually reduced to a single pair, one on each 

 side) inserted into the middle of the rings. In them, too, 

 the tenth {" first ") primary is always more or less long, and 

 the tarsus, with trifliug exceptions, not " bilaminate/^ They 

 nearly correspond to the " Formicarioid"'^ Passeres of Wallace, 

 except that Wallace included in that group the Acromyo- 

 dian, though in some respects aberrant, Menura. The Me- 

 somyodi include all the Tracheophone Passeres, together with 

 the Pipridse, Cotingidoe, Tyrannidse, Pittidse, and a few smaller 

 groups. A further division of these two main groups is given 

 by Prof. G-arrod in the first paper quoted {t. c. p. 518), the 

 smaller divisions being based on one or other of the other 

 characters already noticed. A considerable number of the 

 previously unknown syringes of Passerine birds were described 

 by him for the first time in one or other of the above com- 

 munications, amongst which those of Pitta and Atrichia are 

 particularly noticeable. The peculiar form of the nasal 

 bones in certain of the Tracheophonse, so that these birds 

 are to this extent " schizorhinal,''^ has already been mentioned 

 ■when speaking of that character, as has also the paper on 

 Heteralocha. 



It is much to be regretted that Prof. Garrod did not 

 live to make public his maturer views on the difiicult 

 subject of the general classification of birds. The only 

 published scheme of any such classification is to be found 

 in part ii. of his paper on the Thigh-Muscles {supra, p. 8); 

 and it is within my knowledge that he had already seen 

 reason to deviate in some respects from the arrangement 



in Atrichia the absence of clavicles (Garrod, P. Z. S. 1876, p. 516). As 

 is no-w well known, Prof. Huxley's original description of the skull in 

 Menura (P. Z. S. 18G7, p. 472) was founded on a misconception of its 

 structure, apparently owing to the imperfection of his specimen (f/, 

 Parker, Trans. Z. S. ix. pp. 307, 308). Moreover the " most anomalous 

 forms of Passerine birds yet known," or at all events the moat generalized, 

 are, according to the views of Garrod and myself, certainly the Eurylae- 

 midse, which last therefore, and not the " Pseudoscines," should be placed 

 at the end, in a descending scale, of the Passerine series. 



