258 PROFESSOR W. K. PARKER ON THE 
rim of the frontal (n. gd) is scooped, as in water-birds, for the long nasal gland. This 
Grallatorial character is as remarkable as the Passerine modifications seen in the skull 
of the Hemipods, whose skulls do not clearly show any bevelling of the orbit for the 
gland. 
In another remarkable type, also from Chili, Thinocorus rumicivorus (Plate LIV. 
fig. 5), the orbital eave is scooped a little more than in Phytotoma for its long tongue- 
shaped nasal gland; and these birds agree, also, in the height of the rostrum and in 
the narrowness of the frontal region, above, between the eyes !. 
Altogether this type must be considered to be one of the very lowest of the Pas- 
serines (Coracomorphe), on the whole on a level with the Cotingide, Formicariide, and 
Tanagride ; but by its pluvialine nasal-gland groove, and its probably aborted teeth, it is 
marked off from its nearest known congeners—a species representing a genus, and even 
a family, quite unique. 
Example 34. Skull of Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris. Family Meliphagide. 
Section Oscines. 
Habitat. Australia. 
This and the next type of skull (Plate XLVII. figs. 1-4) may be profitably compared 
with those of the Nectarinide (Plate LIII.). 
Whatever the zoologist may find like or unlike in these two families, anatomically, 
they are widely apart—the Meliphagide of Australia being very aberrant as Passerines, 
and the Nectariniide of Celebes (and, I suppose, also of regions north of the equator) 
being merely delicate tenuirostral modifications of the soft-billed singing birds of the 
Old World. 
In Acanthorhynchus there is nothing especially to be remarked upon in the pterygoids 
(Plate XLVII. fig. 1, pg), but that they diverge considerably to reach the quadrate bones. 
They are expanded where they join the palatines, and have given off the usual meso- 
pterygoid plate to those bones. The epipterygoid process (¢.pg) is well developed and 
rather broad. The postpalatine keels (pt.pa) are as.well developed as in Southern birds 
generally ; the interpalatine spike (¢.pa) is arrested; and the ethmo-palatine half-coil 
has completely coalesced with the corresponding crus of the vomer (¢.pa, ¥). 
The transpalatine (¢.pa) shows the retral, spike-shaped form of the Notogwal types ; 
they diverge considerably in this species. The double isthmus running from the inner 
part of the bone to the ethmo- and interpalatine region is broad, and the prepalatine 
( pr. pa) is long, slender, and dilated in its anterior third; but in its position this bar is 
very remarkable. The relation of the preepalatine bar to the palatine process of the pre- 
‘ Thinocorus, as I have elsewhere shown, comes nearest, on the whole, to the ‘‘ Geramomorphe,” yet it has a 
palate compounded of the Dromeognathous, Agithognathous, and Schizognathous types of structure. If the 
zoologist would find out this riddle, he must plough with the morphologist’s heifer. 
