162 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE OSTEOLOGY 
fronto-lachrymal suture can be seen ; but, for the rest, all is fused, and the lachrymal 
finishes in front the beautiful sharp-edged superorbital semicircle. In front of the 
semicircle the lower edge of the lachrymal is incurved ; but there is no trace of the 
styloid descending process of the Fowl, the thicker rod of the Rail, or the thick 
cellular mass in which the bone terminates below in the Curassow, Pigeon, Syrrhaptes, 
and Hemipodius. The basi-temporal region is truly Gallinaceous ; yet there can be 
detected a manifest lessening of the mass, both centrally and laterally, and a decided 
approach to what is seen in the Great Rails. The basi-sphenoidal ‘‘ rostrum ” is more 
smooth and Pigeon-like than in the Fowl; and the anterior pterygoid processes are 
more decidedly raised, and a little nearer the pituitary space. So also the counterpart 
processes on the pterygoid; they are a little further back, and smaller than in the 
Fowls, and thus are a step nearer the condition of the like parts in the Pigeon and the 
Hemipod. But the interorbital septum, rising above the “rostrum,” is as smooth, 
strong, and complete a partition as that of an aged Fowl—far unlike that of the Pigeon, 
and still further from the great open interorbital space of the Rail. In this latter bird, 
let it be remarked that the lachrymals are excessively like those of the Safeguard 
Lizards (Monitor). 
But for the ossification of the great vertical ethmoid, the ‘‘ Phasianine ” and 
‘«« Tetraonine ”’ would come close to the Chelonians in the totally unossified condition 
of all the ‘‘rhinal” structures. The same thing occurs in the Hemipods and Pigeons, 
save that in them the upper and lower elements of the lateral ethmoids ossify. But in 
Crax, Talegalla, Pterocles, and Syrrhaptes, we have bone in the inferior turbinal and 
septal regions. Yet in these parts the Talegalla comes nearer the Weka-Rails (Ocy- 
dromus) than to its own relatives; indeed it is, in this respect, one of the most 
instructive birds in the whole class. It is a remarkable fact that, whilst the ossification 
and the complexity of the turbinal outgrowths of the nasal sacs are so much simpler 
and so much less ossified than in mammals, yet the actual continuation of the cranio- 
facial axis is, in many birds, highly specialized and curiously segmented—so totally 
unlike the slow osseous degeneration, as it were, to which the middle ethmoid and 
nasal septum is subjected in the Mammalia. These segments have, however, just as 
much affinity with vertebree as the successive pieces that form the digits of the air- 
breathing Vertebrata and the fin-rays of the Fish. The structure I am speaking of can 
best be seen in the Guillemot (Uria), the Auk (Alea), the Gull (Larus), and the Ocy- 
dromus. The middle ethmoid is, as usual, a large bone, and in its alar region directly 
ossifies about four-fifths of the upper turbinal, which, as in the Rail, is osseous for some 
distance at its root. The other tifth is formed by a distinct bone, a true prefrontal, 
and representing the upper half of the Fish’s prefrontal, and the delicate band of 
cartilage which in the Lacertians passes inwards and downwards across the antorbital 
region. The antorbital, or back of the middle turbinal, is ossified, all but ifs lower 
external angle ; this is somewhat in excess of what exists in Ocydromus. 
