256 PROFESSOR W. K. PARKER ON THE 
palatine spurs (#.p7); but these have a Tanagrine feebleness still, as compared with 
those of Coccothraustes (Plate L. figs. 1,2). Moreover, in the latter the palatines 
and the jugal bars are roughly hinged off from the fore beak, as in Parrots, but not 
to the same degree. There is nothing like this in Phytotoma, which retains, even in 
the most modified parts of its face and skull, the more generalized condition of the 
birds of the Notogeea. The short prepalatine bar is broad, and so is the transverse 
isthmus which runs into the thin lamin of the inter- and ethmo-palatine regions 
(i.pa, e.pa): the latter is of less extent than in the Tanagers, and is completely fused, 
as usual, with the vomerine crus (v). 
The large, steeply-arched rostrum (figs. 8 & 10) is ossified throughout to an extent 
only found in certain Southern Passerines, as Artamus, Gymnorhina, and Paradisea 
(Part I. plates lviii., Ix., & Ixii.) ; and the peculiar manner in which the broad maxillo- 
palatines are articulated by a flat facet to the vomer gives to this face a peculiar kind 
of Passerine Desmognathism. In this respect Phytotoma agrees with Pipra, Thanmo- 
philus, Pitta, Grallaria. Now this type shows relationship with the Cotingide, For- 
micariide, and Pittide (Part I. plates lvi., lvii.): it is thus linked on to the most 
generalized forms found even in the Notogea. 
But, superadded to all these marks of ancientness, this bird shows, more than any 
living type, the remains of what are apparently but recently lost teeth—that is, speak- 
ing paleontologically. 
These bony denticles may be faint memorials of such a confluent dental armature 
as we see in the Chameleon: they are not the less of interest, seeing that, as yet, we 
have nothing else intervening between them and the teeth of Odontopterya (see Owen, 
Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. xxix. p. 5111). It is impossible to compare the anterior part 
of the palate in Tanagra and Phytotoma without seeing their close correspondence ; 
and yet we miss in the former the row of clearly defined denticles, both along the 
dentary and palatine ridges of the premaxillary (figs, 8 & 10, d.pa, p.px). Moreover, in 
Phytotoma the end of the beak is pinched off in some degree—it is apiculated. I have 
spoken of these bony projections as bony denticles ; for if their development were traced, 
I imagine that the osseous matter of the premaxillary would be found to run directly 
into the arrested dentary papilla. Even in the Mergansers, amongst the horny-toothed 
birds, the dentary edge of the preemaxillary is very obscurely marked by denticulations. 
In Phytotoma there are about fourteen marginal elevations, and about ten submar- 
ginal (fig. 8) ; there is a deep fossa between these, into which the toothed ridge (with 
one row) of the dentary fits; this latter is a swollen mass of bone united by a wide 
bony mass to its fellow of the opposite side. The bony union of the mandibles, 
however, is feeble and small as compared with what is seen in Coccothraustes, although 
equal to what may be found in the smaller Parrots. The maxillary (ma) runs feebly 
"See also Prof. O. C. Marsh “On Odontornithes,” Amer. Journ. of Sc. and Arts, vol. x. Noy. 1875, and 
yol. xiy. July 1877. 
