OF GALLINACEOUS BIRDS AND TINAMOUS. 159 
feeble as usual, the former being unusually long. The posterior half of the frontal and 
the whole of the parietal region is curiously sinuous and uneven; yet the oval emi- 
nences answering to the highest part of the cerebral hemispheres are well shown. ‘The 
whole of the anterior frontal region is much elevated, and the superorbital still more so, 
the general surface being at this part almost scabrous with risings and depressions ; 
whilst the entire superorbital ridge is broken up into rough bosses that send their bony 
matter into the very thick, wide superorbital membrane, which, stretching from the 
lachrymal to the postfrontal process, gives the anterior part of the top of the head a 
width equal to what obtains in the Parrots. 
The lachrymal, which reminds one of that of the Talegalla in the abortion of its 
descending process, is also thick and knobbed, and is incurved at its edge: the size 
of the superorbital plate makes up for the abortion of the descending portion. The 
knobs along the edge of the lachrymals and frontals of Dendrortyr may, some of them, 
have been at one time separate pieces ; but, whether or no, they are undoubtedly the 
true homologues of the orbito-frontal denticles of the young Dotterel (Charadrius 
hiaticula), and the dying-out of that curious lacertine (Scincoid) character which I 
have to describe in the Tinamcu, where the superorbital region is roofed in with a 
tile-like series of bones. At the fronto-maxillary hinge the coalesced nasal and 
frontal mass dips suddenly and deeply down ; and there is a deep transverse sulcus 
above the hinge. As in the Quail, but still more pronounced, the premaxillary is 
exceedingly stout, highly arched, and short, the nasal aperture very large and almost 
circular, and the angles of the premaxillary stop suddenly behind the descending crus 
of the nasal. 
The feeble prevomerine bones, malars, and quadrato-jugals are perfectly typical ; 
and the facets formed by the squamosal and prootic for the single head of the os qua- 
dratum lie in a perfect acetabulum. The mandible, answering to the premaxilla, is 
very strong, is typical, and has the membranous space wholly obliterated. Now, in 
the marvellously strong lower jaw of the Cock of the Woods (Tetrao urogallus) this 
space is 14 lines long by 4 lines broad—the external angular process in the same jaw 
being full an inch long, and the thicker internal process half an inch; so that the size 
of that oval space in the mandible—arising from the curious manner in which the 
dentary breaks into two long crura at its middle, and to the abortive development of 
the ‘‘ splenial ” piece—is a very good and safe tetraonine character. The whole of the 
sternal apparatus of Dendrortyx is extremely elegant and delicate: the furculum, 
coracoids, and scapulz are all long, narrow, and light. The epi-, hyo-, and hyposternals 
all have the like delicacy of build, the latter being relatively shorter than in the Grey 
Partridge (Pl. XLI. figs. 9,10). The inner hyposternal piece, instead of being bowed 
out as in the Partridge (answering to the thicker body), is quite straight; and the 
horizontal part of the great entoxiphisternal portion of the bone is relatively as much 
pared away, as it were, as in the Tinamou (Pl. XLI. fig. 1). 
VOL. V.—PART III. y 
