260 PROFESSOR W. K. PARKER ON THE 
the inner side of the base of the bony leaf a spur is given off; this binds strongly on 
the shoulder of the vomer (v)—a Southern character. The bony lamina is too thin 
for an air-cell. As in Petroica (Part I. pl. lx. figs. 9 & 10, v), the vomer is evidently 
composed of two larger, inner, and two smaller, outer, tongues of bone: the inner are 
the proper vomers (v), the outer the septo-maxillaries (smzx). As in the Struthionide, 
the vomerine crura are short; they are ankylosed to the ethmo-palatines. The nasal 
wall (n.w) sends inwards a thick spur of cartilage (7.a./), on which each vomer and 
septo-maxillary is grafted. The septum nasi (s. 2) is unusually long, rather deep, and 
is not alate. The alinasal wall is long; and it, with its turbinal, and the inferior 
turbinal, are all unossified—very unlike what we see in the Humming-bird (Trans. 
Linn. Soc. ser. 2, Zoology, vol.i.p.119). In the lower view the alinasal turbinal is only 
slightly seen (figs. 1 & 2, a. tb); for the nasal labyrinth has the unusual bony floor formed 
by the palatal plates of the premaxillaries. The ecto-ethmoid and its downward con- 
tinuation, the pars plana (fig. 1, e.eth, p.p), together form a large spongy mass, on which 
I fail to find either lacrymal or os uncinatum; inside this mass, above, a large chink 
forms a common foramen for the olfactory and orbito-nasal nerves. 
Above, the skull resembles that of a Humming-bird; but its true character is soon 
understood when carefully inspected. It is much further off from the Sylviide than the 
Nectariniide are, as I shall soon show. 
Example 35. Skull of Pétlotis, sp.? Family Meliphagide. Section Oscines. 
Habitat. Australia. 
This is a stouter type, with a shorter beak; and yet it diverges still more than the last 
from the more accurate Sylviine form (as to its skull) of the Nectariniide. The hinges 
of its face are still more modified; for the pterygoids (fig. 3, pg) are quite unique in 
their divergence and their arcuate form; they are quite flat as they approach the 
palatines, being depressed; they are compressed behind; so that they have a twisted 
appearance. ‘The anterior end is foot-shaped, and has lost a large triangle of bone— 
the mesopterygoid, which has coalesced with the palatine. Behind, the epipterygoid 
hook (e@.pg) is well seen. 
But the palatines are at once the most remarkable and elegant seen by me in any 
ornithic type, although the whole class is characterized by the consummate beauty of 
its cranio-facial architecture; and in that building, which looks as though it had been 
wrought by the hands of fairies, the palatines are always the parts that strike the eye. 
The solid part of the rostrum is short in Ptilotis, as compared with Acanthorhynchus 
(figs. 1 & 3); and the bar formed by coalescence of the palatal process of the preemaxillary 
with the preepalatine is very long, and reaches into the anterior third of the rostrum. 
This long widish plank of bone is gently bowed outwards in the nasal region, and again 
in its terminal, free, outer spur—the transpalatine (fig. 3. p.pa, pr.pa, t._pa); so that it 
