British Fossil Birds. 387 



Birds/ mentious bones of an Accipitrine rather larger than 

 the Peregrine Falcon; nothing is^ however, known as to 

 what has become of these specimens, and nothing can, there- 

 fore, be predicated as to the species to which they belonged, 

 although it is quite possible that they should be referred to 

 the Buzzard. Satisfactory evidence of the existence of the 

 last-named species [Buteo vulgaris^ in the Pleistocene of 

 Devonshire is afforded by three specimens in the British 

 Museum from Brixham cave, near Torquay. One of these 

 specimens is an imperfect sacrum and pelvis, which exhibits 

 the sudden deflection of the hinder part of the ilia so cha- 

 racteristic of the Accipitres. 



Steganopodes. — In this group the most remarkable feature 

 in relation to the British superficial deposits is the occur- 

 rence of a species of Pelican in the Norfolk fens, as shown 

 by an imperfect immature humerus in the Woodwardian 

 Museum at Cambridge. Pelicans, it need scarcely be said, 

 are unknown to the existing British fauna, the few individuals 

 that have reached our shores having been blown thither. 

 This explanation, as M. Milne-Edwards remarks in his 

 classic work on fossil birds, will, however, not serve in the 

 case of the Norfolk Pelican, since the humerus by which it 

 is known indicates a bird too young to have performed such 

 a long flight. We are, therefore, compelled to regard this 

 Pelican as indigenous to England, and since the humerus in 

 question is larger than that of Pelecanus onocrotalus, and 

 when adult would have attained still more considerable di- 

 mensions, there is a possibility that it indicates a peculiar 

 species *. 



Pew bird-bones are more characteristic than the coracoid 

 of the genus Phalacrocoraw, in which the shaft is very slender, 

 the subclavicular process approximated to the head, the in- 

 termuscular ridge on the anterior surface very pronounced, 

 and the sternal extremity with a distinctive " tenon-and- 

 mortise " articulation. A coracoid of this description from 

 the Pleistocene brick-earth deposits of Grays, in Essex, is 



* For a description of the type specimen see A. Newton, Proc. Zool. 

 See. 1868, p. 2, and 1871, p. 702. 



