488 Mr. P. R. Lowe on the S'ujnljlcance of certain [Ibis, 



forms still exist which are to all intents and purposes 

 " livine; fossils " and belono- to much earlier horizons than 

 the present or indeed the Pleistocene or even much earlier 

 periods. 



As to the astonishing and remarkable persistence of 

 birds, it may be worth while to record some remarks made 

 by Siiufeldt* upon the fossil Palwotrbufci littoralis of Marsh, 

 a Charadriiform type found as far back as the Cretaceous 

 (Hornerstown, New Jersey). " In my opinion, this tibio- 

 tarsus belonged to the skeleton of a medium-sized Gull and 

 not to any Wader, teuch characters as it presents in its 

 imperfect condition are distinctly larine, and typically larine 

 at that." Granting that this is correct, and allowing that 

 Gulls are specialised offshoots of the Limicolae, we can justly 

 infer that Waders as Waders existed at least as far buck as 

 the Cretaceous. 



I have myself examined examples of Tringine forms from 

 the Middle Miocene which cannot be distinguished from the 

 present-day Wood-Sandpiper ; while fossil " Gulls ^' in the 

 Lower Miocene from Allier in France in the British Museum 

 collection present characters diagnostic of Terns and Limi- 

 colfe of the present day in the most minute and faithful 

 degree. We need not be surprised, therefore, that while 

 the mammalian Pakeontologist has to look for his fiicts as 

 regards mammalian history of the past in the fossils of 

 various geologic horizons, the Ornithologist may by taking 

 thought tind the past history of Birds written to a great 

 extent in the surviving forms of the present — indeed, since 

 avian fossils are such a comparative rarity, it is self-evident 

 that this is the only course open to him. 



In connection with the remarks on page 485 on the subject 

 of morphology and function or habit, it is doubtless true that 

 such anatomical features as the morphology of the supra- 

 orbital grooves for the nas:d glands, and the presence or 



* "Fossil Birds in the Marsh Collection of Yale University." Traus. 

 Connecticut Acad. Arts and Sci. vol. xix. Feb. 1915, p. 23. 



