THE IBIS. 



SEVENTH SERIES. 



No. V. JANUARY 1896. 



I. — Remarks on the Stereornithes, a Group of Extinct Birds 

 from Patagonia. By Chas. W. Andrews, F.G.S.* 



The discovery of the existence of large flightless birds in 

 South America at the time of the deposition of the lower 

 Tertiary strata in that region is one of the most interesting 

 that have been made in recent years^ and the abundance and 

 variety of the remains already brought to light give great 

 promise of future large additions to our knowledge of the 

 group. 



In 1887 Senor Florentine Ameghino, to whom we are 

 indebted for many papers on the remarkable fossil mammals 

 of South America, described the anterior portion of the lower 

 jaw of a large animal which he supposed to be an edentate 

 mammal, and to which he gave the not very euphonious name 

 Phororhacos longissimus. It is perhaps not too much to 

 say that if no further discoveries had been made no one 

 would have ventured to attribute this fragment to a bird. 

 In 1891, however, the same author, having obtained a 

 considerable number of other bones, announced that they 

 belonged to a gigantic bird ; but, owing to the incompleteness 

 of his material, some of the characters given, such as tlie 



* Read in abstract before Sect. D at the Meeting of the Britisli Asso- 

 ciation at Ipswich, on September 13th, 1895. 



SER. VII. VOL. II. B 



