SKULL OF THE £GITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 269 
Example 47. Skull of Corn-Bunting (Emberiza miliaria). Family Emberizide. 
Group Oscines. 
Habitat. Great Britain. 
The skull of the Bunting has the same breadth and fulness of form as that of the 
Icteride ; its rostrum also is deflected in like manner; but the boss is not so raised, 
and the length is much less. The deflection of the bill is very similar in Cardinals, 
Cow-Buntings, and Buntings; and the latter seem to me to deserve to have their own 
little enclosure penned off from the great Fringilline territory. On the whole the 
skull is like that of the Finches; but, besides its greater breadth, it has its tympanic 
bulle, formed by the exoccipital tympanic ala, much more dilated and large. The 
pterygoids are straight and quite normal, giving off a mesopterygoid segment in front, 
and having a free moderate epipterygoid behind. But the palatines are almost as feeble 
as in the Tanagers (Plate XLVI. figs. 1-4 and Plate XLIX. fig. 5). 
The postpalatine keels are steep and emarginate behind; the transpalatine spurs are 
small, the interpalatines small, the ethmo-palatine large and coiled, and the prepalatine 
bars long, almost straight, and feeble (Plate XLIX. fig. 5, pt.pa, t.pa, i.pa, e.pa, pr.pa). 
In this species the maxillo-palatines (ma.p) are flattish trowels, scarcely pneumatic. 
In old birds the palato-maxillaries (fig. 5, p.ma) become ankylosed to the preemaxillary ; 
but in young birds of the first winter I find them free; they are jammed in between 
the dentary angle and palatal process of the premaxillary, and are thickish spatule 
with the blade behind, and but little dilated. These bones are longer and narrower 
than in the Cardinals; they are unusually large. 
The vomer (v) is quite normal; it loses the distinctness of its septo-maxillary ele- 
ment early, and is grafted upon the nasal wall; this wall does not form so large a floor 
as in the Icteride. As in the Icteridz, the septum nasi is largely alate; and these ale, 
as well as the edges of the nasal floor, are elegantly dentate (s. n, tr, n. f). 
The fore margin of the vomer has a small median process running into a slight keel ; 
its edges are thick, and do not send down a ridge. The alinasal walls, septum nasi, 
and the alinasal and inferior turbinals do not ossify; the ecto-ethmoid projects con- 
siderably ; the pars plana is large, and has a concave external margin, ending in a 
large foot; it is of great size, considerable thickness; and over it, as in Larks and 
Finches, the first and nasal nerves escape by one chink. I can find neither lacrymal 
nor os uncinatum ; in this the Bunting agrees with by far the majority of the lesser 
Passerines, either thick- or soft-billed. 
Example 48. Skull of Yellow-hammer (Hmberiza citrinella). Family Emberizide. 
Group Oscines. 
Habitat. Great Britain. 
In the lesser species the palatines are still feebler than in the last, the transpalatine 
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