128 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE STRUCTURE 



The foremost medio-palatine is a minute style, having the equally minute styliform 

 vomer beneath it ; the second medio-palatine is a mere grain of bone *. 



The nasal labyrinth is well developed in these birds, and is thoroughly ossified ; so that 

 the bony skull of no other bird is so useful to the student who would master this elegant 

 sense-organ. 



On the Structure of the Skull in Birds of Prey (" Aetomorphge," Huxley). 



Both for this and for the Goose tribe I have sought to extend the lines that bound in 

 their " lot," confident that in the Southern World we have extant, and, to a much greater 

 degree, in the buried Tertiary world there are extinct, many a type that cannot and could 

 not wear the ordinary ornithological harness. The characters of an Eagle, a Falcon, or 

 an Owl may easily be set down ; but when the scientific formalist comes athwart a bird 

 in which all these are shaken up together, like the lots in the helmet of Agamemnon, 

 then every thing breaks down, and his wire-drawn distinctions lose their value. 



Yet these distinctions are not the less valuable, being applicable to the netcest and most 

 specialized forms ; but they melt away in certain types, just as the professional distinctions 

 of civilized life are seen to melt away when we contemplate the fife and polity of 

 savage races. 



I make these remarks in defence of the position in which it is here sought to place a 

 bird, the Cariama, the relationships of which seem to me to be self-evident, and which 

 has been looked at by most ornithologists through the coloured and refracting glasses of 

 their own arbitrary systems. 



Having no misgivings as to the essentially Raptorial nature of the Cariama (Dicholo- 

 phus), I do the more boldly place it for comparison side by side with the two most 

 intensely specialized types in the whole group, viz. the Falcon and "the Owl. Such a 

 collocation, however painful to the eyes of full-grown systematists, will, if its natural- 

 ness be proved, be of real value to the tentative worker, serving at least as a hint that 

 the strength of Nature will burst the new ropes we seek to bind her with, those bonds 

 being, indeed, as weak " as the tow when it smelleth the fire." 



On the Structure of the Skull and Face in Dicholophus cristatus. 

 The form of the whole head in this bird is Vulturine (Plate XXIV. fig. 2), as may be 

 seen at once if it be compared with that of Oypsfulvus (fig. l)f. 



* It is not always possible to be absolutely certain as to whether any given grain of bone belongs to the hinder 

 part of the vomerine region or to the palatine commissure. 



t How the eyes of naturalists have been holden against seeing the truth here I cannot understand ; the legs of the 

 bird, so thin and long, have robbed it of its aquiline glory. A few years since, showing two of these birds in the 

 wardens of the Zoological Society to my brother, a man of like tastes with myself, he at once recognized the Cariama 

 as a kind of Hawk, whilst it crouched upon the perch. Another individual was standing in the enclosure in 

 front of the aviary : " What bird is that ?" I immediately asked. " I cannot say," was the answer. 



Capt. Burton (' Exploration of the Highlands of the Brazil,' London, 1869, vol. i. p. 57) compares this bird with 

 the Secretary (Gypogeranus), and says that it has the same serpent-eatiDg tastes (see also vol. ii. p. 18). 



The keeper of the aviaries where the Cariamas are kept informed me that they eat mice and sparrows, beating 

 them about before they kill them. On July 31st, 1872, I watched both D. cristatus and D. burmeisteri dust them- 



