54 R. W. SHurELDT, 
With its usual ornithie characters, the proximal phalanx 
of the first finger is narrow and elongate, and its flattened posterior 
portion presents no vacuities as it often does in other birds. 
The Pelvic Limb. Fifty-six millimeters is about the length 
of the femur in a specimen of Dendrocygna autumnalis (454), and 
the bone is thoroughly non-pneumatic. Superiorly, the small, semi- 
globular head, the flat summit, and the upper margin of the antero- 
posteriorly broad trochanter major are in the same plane, 
caput femoris being separated from the summit merely by a 
shallow groove. There is scarcely any “neck” to the head, and 
upon the latter the pit for the ligamentum teres is very small. 
The femoral shaft is nearly straight and subeylindrical, while 
the linea aspera upon it, and that of the femuro-tibial 
attachment, are very well marked. The tubercle for the insertion 
of the loop of the biceps cruris is quite prominent, while the 
fossa poplitea is but moderately excavated. Either condyle is 
of good size, and the intercondylar groove of some depth, and in 
fact the femur in Dendrocygna presents no very peculiar characters, 
it having all the usual ornithic features as seen in the average 
pelvic limb of the Anseres generally (Fig. 45, Pl. 8; Fig. 73, 
P110: Pig.'82, Pl. 11’ and Ri 2 LP) 
Proportionately, the femur in Olor is mueh stouter and shorter 
than it is in either species of the North American “Tree-Ducks”; 
but, otherwise like it, it is completely non-pneumatic. Short and 
very straight, the bone is Cereopsis has the proximal extremity, 
including the trochanter and head, large, with practically no neck 
to the latter. 
In Ohenonetta the superior border of the trochanter major is 
slightly raised above the summit, and is concave toward the femoral 
head. In this duck, the inner condyle is much elevated, and the 
antero-intercondylar channel deep and broad (Fig. 73, Pl. 10). 
Chen hyperboreus nivalis has a femur 78 mm long, and in it we 
find the dendrocygnine characters all repeated; but this might, with 
almost equal truth, be said of the femur of Aiz sponsa. 
My investigations, as far as I have carried them, incline me to 
believe that the patella never ossifies in any of the Anseres, 
and in Dendrocygna it consists of a large, dense piece of cartilage, 
having both the form and fulfilling the part of a good-sized patella; 
this also obtains in other anserine birds. 
Measuring from the highest point ontheentocnemialprocess 
