Zoological Society. ^77 



the first being very small and conical ; the third are subtriangular, 

 with a slight tubercle on the inner side : the orbit not quite com- 

 plete, but with a short interruption in the middle of the hinder side. 



Length of skull 2^ inches, width i| ; length of palate lyV inch ; 

 of face from front of orbit 5^ lines ; of lower jaw 1 inch 3^ lines. 



5. Description of a new species of Cinclosoma. 

 By J. Gould, Esq., F.R.S. etc. 



Cinclosoma castaneothorax, n. sp. 



Sp. Ch. — Crown of the head, ear-coverts, back of the neck and 

 upper tail- coverts brown ; stripe over the eye and another from the 

 base of the lower mandible, down the side of the neck, white ; shoul- 

 ders and wing- coverts black, each feather with a spot of white at the 

 tip ; all the upper surface, the outer margins of the scapularies, and 

 a broad longitudinal stripe on their inner webs next the shaft, deep 

 rust-red ; primaries, secondaries, and the central portion of the sca- 

 pularies dark brown; tail black, all but the two central feathers 

 largely tipped with white ; chin and throat black ; chest crossed by 

 a band of rich rust-red ; sides of the chest and flanks brownish grey, 

 the latter blotched with black ; centre of the abdomen white ; under 

 tail-coverts brown, deepening into black near the tip, and margined 

 with white ; bill and feet black. 



Total length, 8^ inches; bill, 1 ; wing, 4; tail, 4J: ; tarsi, 1. 



Hab. Darling Downs. New South Wales. 



Remark, — Nearly allied to C. castanotus and C. cinnamomeum, from 

 v;hich it is however easily distinguished by the colour of the chest 

 and back. 



Dr. Macdonald communicated orally his ideas on the Vertebral 

 Homologies as applicable to Zoology, of which observations he has 

 furnished the following abstract : — 



" Dr. Macdonald gave a short sketch of the characters of the typical 

 vertebra, as proposed by Professor Ov.en and several continental 

 zoologists and comparative anatomists, and then contrasted it with 

 one which had been the result of many years' study, and which he 

 considered more in accordance with the vertebra and its auto- 

 genous and exogenous elements as traceable in the endoskeleton of 

 the Vertebrate classes, and also as showing its analogy in the Annu- 

 lose animals. The table which he exhibited points out these, from 

 which it would appear that Dr. Macdonald considers the bodies of 

 the vertebrae, as described by anthropotomists, — continued downwards 

 through the sacrum and coccyx to the top of the tail, and the basilar 

 process upwards to the sella turcica, — as so many portions or segments 

 of a central axis formed around a centrochord, — and not a notochord 

 as usually described, — from which the autogenous elements spring 

 and radiate to the periphery, and, converging mesially along the dorsal 

 aspect, enclose within the tunnel of the Neuro-Camera the whole 

 cerebro- spinal axis, of varying dimensions in the different regions, 

 and another set of radii meeting sternally, and forming the three 



