i5!S5!.l Corie.<pon(fc}ice. AAl 



permitted to judge from the skull alone; tliere is nothing especial though 

 in this part of the skeleton in Cdlanio^piza that at all reminds one of the 

 skull in Habiii melanocephdla . 



Elsewhere I have shown that Molnf/inix ater was hy its skeleton a Fincli, 

 though the most icterine of all our Fringillidie. with the exception perhaps 

 iii' Dolic/ioiiys, a form which I ha\'e not yet osteologically examined, hut 

 judging from what I found in Molothnis, I am strongly inclined to believe 

 that it too belongs on the fringilline side of the line. Barring the broad 

 frontal region in the first-named species, its skull approaches in its general 

 fiic/ts the skull in the Towhees antl their more immediate allies, and from 

 them it shades beautifully into the Icteridie. 



Passing for a moment to the skull in another familw the Tanagridte, 

 we meet with the extreme modification of the conirostral type in another 

 direction, so profound a change, indeed, that I am not familiar with the 

 skull of any true fiingilline, that the skull of such a species, for instance, 

 as Piranga litdoviciana could be confused with, or would in its entirety 

 resemble. In theTanager to which I refer the nostrils are large and ellip- 

 tical ; there is a total absence of an osseous nasal septum ; as compared 

 with an average Finch the skull iselongated, and the brain-case relatively 

 smaller; its palatines are of the most marvelously delicate construction, 

 and their postero-external angles drawn out into long hair-like spiculse ; 

 the pterygoids are markedly slender ; and finally, the presence of 5ef<?«- 

 tiiiry pulatuie proct's^es plainly points to its affinity with such a Grosbeak 

 as Habia melanocephala among the Fringillida^. So far as the skull goes, 

 the Tanagers are remotely linked with the Mniotiltida? through Icteria, 

 and in Ictcria -jiien.t longicauda the skull presents some few striking differ- 

 ences from that part of the skeleton in Piranga ludovictafia, for not only 

 does it seem to exceed it in frailty and delicacy of construction with 

 respect to the bones composing it, but in the skull of the Chat to which I 

 refer we find that the secondary palatine processes are absent; the pos- 

 tero-external angles of the palatines are produced as blunt apophyses, and 

 the anterior projecting limbs of these bones are conspicuously slender 

 and widely separated ; the ramal vacuity of the mandible is large, elon- 

 gated, and elliptical in outline, while the sides of this bone are shallow, 

 and its entire make impresses us with its weakness. Omitting, how-ever, 

 the mandible, the palatines, the acuteness of the superior osseous mandible, 

 we should have remaining in the rest of the skidl of Icteria a structure 

 that without the slightest violence coulil be appropriated bv an\- true 

 Pirangine avian type. 



Turning again to the skeleton oi Habia tiielaitocephala, we find that it 

 possesses nineteen vertebrie between the cranium and the pelvis, all freelv 

 movable upon each other; of these the ultimate y/>f connect with the 

 sternum through costal ribs, while just anterior to them are two vertebra; 

 which support free ribs (the anterior pair being very minute), and finally, 

 there is a pair of sacral ribs, the htemapophyses to which fail to connect 

 \vith the sternum. This arrangement of the ribs and vertebra? also obtains 

 in Pipilo. Zonotrichia. Icteria. and other forms, and is undoubtedly the 



