166 ME. W. K. PAEKEE ON THE STEUCTUEE AND 



The Ostriches have their pterygoid at its hinder end curled round the front margin 

 of the OS quadratum ; there is a feebly-marked synovial facet on each bone, concave on 

 the pterygoid, and convex on the quadratum; not so in typical birds, nor in the 

 Notornis. If we look at the bone from below {op. cit. pi. 62, figs. 3, 28), we see a small, 

 very high, bluntly cone-shaped process ; on this the glenoid cavity at the end of the 

 pterygoid rolls ; it is one of the sharpest points of distinction between Ostriches and 

 other birds. Let the observer take the oldest Green Turtle's head [Chelone my das), and 

 although he will not be able to find a distinct metapterygoid process, yet he will find 

 this pterygoid process as a blunt style of cartilage ; in the dry skull it loses this soft 

 part, and a deep fossa is left. 



The point of this cartilaginous projection articulates with the dovra-tumed top of the 

 now sickled-shaped, but once cylindrical "epi-pterygoid" (Pakkee; "columella," Cuv.); 

 this latter bone, so large and erect in Lizards generally, is a mere transitory epiphysis in 

 the highest types of birds, e. g. the Thrushes (Turdus), but the cup on its posterior end 

 (= upper in the Lizard) rolls on the knob-like pterygoid process of the os quadratum. 

 My apology for this digression is, that this knob-like process on the os quadratum of 

 the Great Notornis is to the morphologist " a nail fastened in a sure place ;" and on it, 

 supposing a mere fragment of this os quadratum had been all we possessed of this bird, 

 might have been hung the full weight of my assertion, viz. that the bird in question is 

 not a congener of the Dinomis *. 



The form of the pterygoids is determined by their relations, and can be deduced in 

 both Dinomis and Notornis ; totally difierent they must have been : in the latter they 

 were slender, and yet short bones, with a deep concavity at the posterior end, and with 

 no facet for the basisphenoid, such as existed in the Dinomis. 



The palatines are not shovsTi in the photograph of the Dinomis's skull, but the con- 

 dition of the surrounding bones show that they were like those of the Emu, and projected 

 but little in front of the suspensorial part. In the Great Notornis each palatine runs 

 2 1 inches in front of the proximal orbital process, and, totally unlike the feeble simple 

 struthious palatine, has the typically ornithic deep groove below, bounded by the two 

 well-marked keels. These palatines, instead of being wide apart, and having a huge 

 vomer separating the two very distinct middle nostrils, are only separated by a space 

 3 lines wide ; in this space (above) lies the tiny vomer, only 8 lines in length, scarcely 



* Professor Owen was perfectly aware of the non -struthious nature of this pickaxe-headed bird ; he says 

 {op. cit. p. 375), " The Dinomis, if it have no near ally in any known existing bird of New Zealand, appears to 

 have but little immediate affinity to any of the struthious or other known birds in the rest of the world." 

 Now I have compared this skull with those of the genera Crex, Ocydromus, Trihonyx, Brachypteryx, Rallus, 

 Oallinula, Notornis (Mantelli), Porphyrio, and Fulica — all true Rails, and with those of the birds that lie in the 

 region round about the EaUs, such as Psophia, Ehinochettis, &c., and I am perfectly satisfied of its ralline nature. 

 Moreover, now that there are many true struthious heads of the Dinomis in the British Museum, how is it that 

 this skull, nearly as precious, and quite as unique as the skeleton of the Archeopteryx, is stiU shown to the public 

 as that of a Dinomis ? 



