AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIRD'S SKULL. 131 



Ketupa ceylonensis, Plate XXV. fig. 11) come the nearest to Bicholophus in respect of 

 this bone and its relation to the vomer ; but in these birds the vomer has no fore foot *. 



The prepalatine bars (prpa) are long and slender; the transpalatine is rounded off 

 (tpa), and passes into a short postpalatine {ftpa), on the inner margin of which the sub- 

 mesial muscular ridge ends ; the whole form and manner of these parts is Falconine, but 

 drawn out. The upper part, or ethmo-palatine (epa), meets its fellow process for some 

 extent in the middle, the fore end diverging for the medio-palatine keystone (mpct), and 

 the hinder for articulation with the diverging pterygoids (pg). Threads of bone represent 

 the interpalatine (ipa), which, if developed, would have given a desmognathous palate, 

 bound together in the same manner, and composed of the same parts, as that of the 

 Green Turtle, which has the anterior vomerine foot inwedged between rudimentary 

 palatine plates of the maxillaries and palatines. This Reptile stands halfway between 

 the Lizard, with its highly schizognathous face, and the Crocodile, in which desmognathism 

 is carried to its uttermost, as in the Mammalian genus Myrmecophaga. Half the 

 charm of this research would vanish if we could possibly forget that the bird groups are 

 luxuriant outgrowths of the reptilian understock, and that their fiery nature once lay hid 

 in the stone-cold Eeptile. 



Some of the Raptorial characters of the Cariama are exaggerated. The shortness of 

 the pterygoids {pg) is greater than in the Owl and Falcon; they answer, however, 

 exactly in character to those of the latter, having no articular junction with the basi- 

 pterygoid processes (bpg), these being arrested. Their epipterygoid process (epg) is a 

 hooked flange. The splints of the face are confluent, the marginal line being continuous 

 from the neb to the quadrate hinge ; the hinder jugal bar is slender. About two fifths 

 of the premaxillary mass is continuous in the fore palate ; the palatine processes of the 

 premaxillaries are long, slender, and lie outside the prepalatine laths. At the middle 

 these large bones are again united by a commissure, namely, the alinasal bridge (aln). 



But the most remarkable part of the face is the maxillo-palatine floor, which is 

 relatively larger than that of almost any bird ; the processes forming this hard palate 

 are flat ear-shaped lobes, which unite at the mid line by harmony. They are pointed 

 behind to let in the foot of the vomer, and broad and notched in front, behind the large 

 anterior palatine space. These plates have the thin fibrous character of the main part of 

 the skeleton, instead of being dense as in the Falcons, or spongy as in the Owls. The 

 skulls of those types when young (figs. 4 & 5) are exactly correspondent in their essential 

 morphology to that of the Cariama, being of the " imperfectly direct " desmognathous 

 type. 



The general form of the skull seen from above, with its alate lacrymals, is evidently 

 an enfeeblement of the vulturine type (fig. 2) as compared with that of Gyps fulvus 

 (fig. 1) ; and what arrest and feebleness there is belongs not to the Crane, with its dense 

 heavy skull and square-browed lacrymals, but is something intermediate between that 



* I have the more carefully gone over these details because of the instructive fact that the structure of the Cariama 

 is best explained by that of the various Raptorial subfamilies, and is not illustrated by members of the family to 

 which it has been supposed to belong. My notes on the soft parts of this bird, and the observations and comparisons 

 I have made of the rest of its skeleton, all tell the same tale. 



SECOND SERIES. — ZOOLOGY, VOL. I. T 



