550 VULTURIDJS. 



collected before the year 1793, and which was afterwards 

 transferred, with the rest of his anatomical collections, to 

 the Royal College of Surgeons. The second ornitholite 

 (fig. 233) is in the museum of James S. Bowerbauk, Esq., 

 F.R.S. I have since been favoured with the view of the 

 sternum of another species of bird from the eocene clay 

 near Primrose Hill, through the kindness of N. T. We- 

 therell Esq. ; and Mr. Konig has published a figure of 

 the fossil cranium of a bird from Sheppey, in the last part 

 of his ' Icones Fosslles SectUes? 



The Hunterian fossil includes, with the mutilated ster- 

 num s s', the sternal ends of the two coracoid bones c c\ 

 a dorsal vertebra v, the lower end of the left femur /, 

 the proximal end of the corresponding tibia , portions 

 of two other long bones, and a few fragments of the slender 

 ribs ; all of which are cemented together by the grey in- 

 durated clay usually attached to Sheppey fossils. 



The entire keel, and the posterior and right margins of 

 the sternum, are broken away ; but the obvious remains 

 of the origin of the keel, and the length of the sternum, 

 forbid a reference of the fossil to the Struthious or strictly 

 terrestrial order. The lateral extent and convexity of 

 the body of the sternum, the presence and course of 

 the secondary intermuscular ridges, r, and the commence- 

 ment of the keel close to the anterior border of the ster- 

 num, remove the fossil from the Brachypterous family of 

 web-footed birds, and lead us to a comparison of the 

 fossil with the corresponding parts of the skeleton in the 

 ordinary birds of flight. 



Sufficient of the sternum remains for the rejection of 

 the Gallinacea, and those Grallatorial and Passerine birds 

 which have that bone deeply incised; and the field of 

 comparison is thus restricted to such species as have the 



