74 Miscellaneous. 



the relations in which the difterent groups of this class of vevtebi'ates 

 lived. Whilst some of them are extremely common, there are others 

 which are only found, so to speak, accidentally, and which are only 

 represented in my collection by a single bone or only a few bones. 

 The species most frequently met with are the water-birds : thus the 

 ducks have left numerous remains ; the cormorant is only found at 

 certain places. Evidently at that time, as now, birds had prefer- 

 ences for certain places, certain rocks, «S:c., from which they de- 

 parted but little. The little diver (Colyrnboides minutns) is less 

 abundant than the gulls, of which two species, La^-us elegans and 

 L. totanoides, exist in profusion. 



It is the same with some of the small shore-waders belonging to 

 the genera Totanus and Trinc/a, whilst Elorius and Himantopus are 

 represented by few individuals. I have found numerous bones of 

 the ibis, and in particular of the Palcelodus amhiguus ; the four other 

 species of the latter genus are by no means so common. Thus out 

 of two hundred bones of these birds hardly one will turn out to be 

 of P. crassipes, P. minidus, P. gracilipes, or P. goliath. The por- 

 tions of the skeleton of the flamingo are rarely found entire at St. 

 Geraud le Puy ; whei'eas at Coumon and Chaptuzat, on the contrary, 

 they are well preserved. I have only once met with the bones of 

 the adjutant ; they belonged to two young specimens, and were as- 

 sociated in the same excavation filled with sand. The cranes are rare ; 

 their bones are almost always broken and often injiired by the teeth 

 of rodents, as if they had lain for a long time on the bank before 

 being carried to the bottom of the lake. The rails, the gallinaceous 

 birds, the pigeons, the sand-grouse, the passerine birds, the raptores, 

 and the parrots have left but few traces of their existence. These 

 birds, from their mode of life, did not remain continually on the 

 shores of the lakes or watercourses ; their remains might be eaten 

 or destroyed at once, and it would need a concurrence of exceptional 

 circumstances for them to be transported by the streams into the 

 alluvial deposits of the lakes : thus I had explored these deposits for 

 more than ten years before I met with a single bone of a parrot, 

 sand-grouse, secretary bird, or of several of the raptores ; and some, 

 of which I had collected the remains a long time ago, have not ap- 

 peared since. 



All the bones of birds collected in the Miocene beds of Weissenau, 

 in the basin of Mayence, that I have been able to examine, present a 

 complete resemblance to those of the Department of the Allier. 



The ornithological population of the celebrated deposit of Sansan, 

 in the Department of the Gers, presents another character ; not one 

 of its representatives is found in the lacustrine deposits of the Eour- 

 bonnais and the Auvei-gne : and although the greater part of the 

 species belong to families at present existing in our fauna, not one 

 is known to be actually living, and several of them present charac- 

 ters sufficient to constitute new genera. 



I have discovered there a parrot of a more slender form than that 

 of the Allier, and I have designated it by the name of Psittacus Lar- 

 tetianus, to attach the name of my regretted master and friend to one 



