Letters, Extracts, Notices, &;c. 141 



All his birds go to Graf v. Berlepscli's Museum. Dr. H. v. 

 Jliering has changed his residence to Sao Paulo, and has 

 become Director o£ the Museum of that city. Mr. J. Kali- 

 nowski^the collector of the Museum Branickianum of Warsaw, 

 has sent home a very fine series of specimens from the 

 Junin district of Peru, which are now being examined and 

 named by Graf v. Berlepsch and M. Stolzmann. The 

 new Grebe, described and figured above (p. 109), is one of the 

 first-fruits of this naturalist's exertions. 



The Systematic Position 0/ yEpyornis. — The 'Geological 

 Magazine ^ of December last (n. s. dec. iii. vol. ix. p. 572) 

 contains an article of special interest to ornithologists. 

 This is a notice of the memoir lately contributed to the 

 ' Palfeontologische Abhandlungen ' (N. F. Bd. ii. Heft ii.) by 

 Prof. Burckhardt on some remains of ^"Epyornis collected by 

 Hildebrandt in Central Madagascar during the year 1880, 

 and now deposited in the Mineralogisches Museum in Berlin. 

 The special interest of the paper, as the reviewer in the 

 ' Geological Magazine ' points out, consists in the fact that 

 we have now descriptions and figures of the pelvis and meta- 

 tarsus of JEpyornis. The collection also included a complete 

 tibia, an imperfect femur, some vertebrse, and some frag- 

 ments of ribs. These remains are referred to a new species 

 [JEpyornis hildebrandti) intermediate in size between the 

 jE. medius and ^. modestns of INIilne-Edwards. 



After an exhaustive comparison of the osteological cha- 

 racters of JEpyornis with those of the other Ratites, the 

 author comes to the conclusion that the JEpyornithidse 

 constitute a distinct family of Ratitse, having no near 

 relations, and being highly specialized and characterized by 

 the massive structure of the skeleton accompanied by the 

 pneumaticity of some of its parts. The resemblances to 

 the Diuornithidse he regards as superficial and merely the 

 result of convergence due to similar conditions of life ; on 

 the other hand, the differences are considered to be of great 

 importance — e. g., the pneumaticity of the femur, which, 

 among the Ratitse, occurs in JEpyoi'nis and Struthio alone. 

 Struthlo also resembles /Epyoriiis in some other rcsi)ccls — 



