254 PROFESSOR OWEN ON CNEMIORNIS. 
in a more perfect state than were some of those bones—as, e. g., the sternum and pelvis 
therein described and represented. The most instructive additional bones of this second 
series were an almost entire skull and a humerus, the latter showing that the bone 
referred to Cnemiornis in the description of pl. lxiv. (tom. cif.) must have belonged 
to some other, apparently similar-sized, flightless bird, which I deem to have been 
probably an Aptornis, inasmuch as a few bones referable to that genus were included in 
the collection sent to me in 1864 from Timaru. For this instructive accession to the 
evidences of Cnemiornis (tom. cit. p. 395) ornithology is indebted to the Hon. Captain 
Fraser, F.R.G.S., who has consigned an account of the cave in which the bones were 
discovered to the ‘ Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,’ vol. v. (1872)'. 
The ‘ Notes’ by Dr. Hector on these remains, now in the Museum of the Wellington 
Philosophical Society, have been published in the ‘Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society of London,’ Part I. 1874. 
Having since had the opportunity of examining portions of two crania, certain ribs, 
humeri, and a metacarpus of other individuals of Cnemiornis, I can testify to the accuracy 
of the figures of those bones given by Dr. Hector; and to his ‘ Notes’ my later acqui- 
sitions enable me to add descriptions and figures of an ulna and an almost entire coracoid 
of Cnemiornis. The more perfect of my two skulls includes also the roof and fore 
(lacrymal) part of the orbits, wanting in Dr. Hector’s figure: and I believe, therefore, 
that a description of these specimens confirming Dr. Hector’s demonstration of the 
former existence of a very large, not to say gigantic, Anserine bird in New Zealand 
will not be unacceptable, inasmuch as in their description comparisons will be made 
with the skulls of other Lamellirostrals, more especially of the flightless Duck (Tachy- 
eres® brachypterus, Latham) of Magellan’s Strait, and of the Cereopsis cinereus of 
Australia. The latter bird is notable among Anserines for the length of its legs and 
shortness of its bill; and it appears to me more terrestrial in its habits than most of its 
living congeners. 
§ 2. Skull. 
The occipital surface of the skull of Cnemiornis is remarkable, in the present com- 
parative series, for its breadth, especially at its base, here due to the outward expansion 
of the paroccipitals (Pl. XX XV. fig. 2, 4,4), in which feature the skull of Tachyeres is 
' «A description of the Earnsclough Moa-Cave,’ p. 102. (This cave is in the interior of the province of 
Otago.) 
* The generic name Micropterus, applied by Lesson in 183] to the Anas brachyptera of Latham, was bespoken 
by Lacépéde, in 1802, for a genus of Fishes. Microptera was applied by Grayenhorst, in the same year, to a 
family of pentamerous Coleoptera, and by Robin, in 1830, to a genus of Diptera. -Micropterya was given by 
Hiibner, in 1816, to a genus of Lepidoptera, and by Agassiz, in 1829, to a genus of Fishes. The name aboye 
proposed for a subgeneric type of Anatide, as well-marked as any of those to which terms indicative of such 
distinction have been applied, is derived from rayuypns, swift rower, and relates to the characteristic move- 
ments of Latham’s species in water, which has obtained for it, from navigators, the name of “ Steamer Duck,” 
