150 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE OSTEOLOGY 
ture. Such birds also yield to man the greatest delight ; they always have been, and 
always will be cherished by us, whatever be our age or our degree of general culture ; 
and one of the saddest descriptions of a waste and deserted country has its gloominess 
and desolateness wrought to the deepest degree of shade by this one short sentence— 
And all the birds of the heavens were fled.” 
Macgillivray' was perfectly right in laying great stress upon the structure of the 
digestive and vocal organs,—the former relating to the food and therefore the habits 
and instincts of the bird, the latter forming a correct measure and index of the higher 
ornithic qualifications and accomplishments. For as that speaking, singing, mocking 
animal, Man, is the culmination of the Mammalian series, so that bird in which the 
gifts of speech, song, and mockery are combined must be considered as the top and 
crown of the bird-class. But the digestive organs failed me just where I wanted them 
to be most oracular, viz. in the case of the Syrrhaptes. If I had sat down contented 
with what the digestive organs of that bird revealed, I should have said, it is simply a 
Grouse. But its vocal organs do not coincide with those of the ‘‘ Tetraonide”’; they 
agree with those of Pigeons and Plovers. The study of its osseous construction reveals 
much more than this, as I shall show hereafter. Yet nothing could be more puzzling 
than a mere acquaintance with the condition of the adult condition of the bones of 
birds, especially those of the skull proper: an acquaintance with, not one, but many 
stages of the beautiful framework is necessary. I will give an instance to show the 
bearing of these remarks. 
I had long been in the habit of watching the marvellous gracefulness and ease of the 
flight of the pure-breasted Sea-Gulls, and of comparing them with the Lapwing,—when 
one day it rushed back to my recollection that many years ago I had found their skele- 
tons to have much in common. Having procured a series of young Gulls (Larus 
argentatus and L. ridibundus), I found, upon careful dissection, that the skull and the 
bones of the face in these pulli corresponded, not only with those of the young, but also 
of the full-grown Lapwing and Golden Plover. The skull of the adult Gull, or even of 
one but two months old, would not have revealed this ; for these birds have scarcely 
acquired the power of flight before the most marked pluvialine characters have been 
effaced. The acquisition of a more vulturine cast of face, the longer jaws, the hooked 
bill, and the absorption of certain parts of the outer table of the bones of the spine to 
admit air is in perfect harmony with the obliteration of the anterior pterygoid processes* 
and their corresponding peduncles on the pterygoids, and with the filling-in by bone 
of the lateral occipital fontanelles, which are so large and open in the embryonic Gull 
and in the adult Lapwing. (PJ. XX XVII. figs. 1, 2, & 4.) 
‘ History of British Birds, vol. i. p. 52, and in many other parts of that excellent work. 
> It is very curious to find that the atlas and axis of the Gulls are medullary bones ; this may be seen 
Larus ridibundus, L. canus, and L. maximus. 
