294 PROF. W. K. PARKER ON XGITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 
Besides these “‘ vomerine” or labial cartilages, there is what I shall freely illustrate 
here as the “ recurrent trabecular lamina;” thisis formed by the apices of the recurrent 
trabecular cornua, which have coalesced. 
The first group I now take up will make these matters clear to the reader, and will 
also give us the most rudimentary and reptilian condition of the nasal labyrinth—one 
very important part of the present subject. 
On THE MorPHOLOGY OF THE FACE IN THE “‘ TURNICOMORPH2.” 
I have had rare opportunities lately for studying this peculiar group of birds, and 
can correct some things in which I was misled in my former paper (“On the Galli- 
naceous Birds,” Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. v. p. 172). 
A few years since my friend Mr. Swinhoe, Consul at Amoy, sent me some young spe- 
cimens of Turnix rostrata, from Formosa, in spirits; Mr. Salvin has put into my hands 
a very perfect skeleton of Hemipodius varius, in which the nasal cartilages are preserved 
in a dry state; and I have also the separate parts of the skull of a young Hemipodius 
varius, the gift of Dr. Murie. 
If the palate of the young Zurnix (Pl. LIV. fig. 1) be compared with that of the 
Syrrhaptes, Grouse, Plover, and Pigeon, already referred to as figured in my former 
paper, it will be seen at a glance that these birds have much in common; they belong, 
evidently, to one morphological stratum, or nearly so. But the Zwrnix is the lowest 
of these types; and it would seem as if he and his compeers were the waifs and strays 
of a large and widely distributed group of birds only a little higher in the scale than 
the Tinamous. 
From such a group, largely extinct, the Sand-Grouse may have arisen; from such a 
stock the Plovers; and these old types may also be looked upon as zoologically paternal 
to several other modern families, the greatest of these being the Passerines. As to the 
relation of the Hemipods to existing types, I cannot do better than refer the reader to 
Professor Huxley’s paper on the “ Alectoromorphe ” (Zool. Proc. 1868, pp. 302-304). 
There, however, no suspicion has been given as to the meaning of the broad “ vomer” 
in relation to the Passerines; it is merely compared to that of the Grouse—not of 
Lagopus, but of Tetrao urogallus (see ‘On the Classification of Birds” Proc. Zool. Soe. 
1867, p. 482, fig. 140). But even that vomer is a poor representative of that of the 
Hemipod, and for some years it has been a mystery to me because of its passerine 
form. 
The flat-faced stump of the bone which in Hemipodius binds on each side the 
trabecular to the palatine arch—* basi-pterygoid process” (Pl. LIV. figs. 1 & 9 b.pg)— 
accords exactly in place and size with that of the Pigeon and Plover, and is less 
struthious than that of Syrrhaptes. 
The parasphenoidal bar (fig. 1, pa.s) is rather massive in the young; but in the old 
