306 PROF. W. K. PARKER ON &GITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 
narrow, thickish, scabrous, and solid, very unlike the elegant pedunculated trowel of 
the adult bird, with its angular projections and pneumatic chamber. But it is very much 
like its symmorph in the lower types of the Coracomorphe, which seldom become 
pneumatic, and are but little pedunculated. 
In the figure the rest of the nasal labyrinth is indicated on the left side by dotted 
lines; in the adult (Sylvia cinerea) the “os uncinatum” is only obscurely marked out 
on the rounded lower border of the pars plana. 
Having endeavoured to give both the contrast and the harmony of the lowest and the 
highest of the birds possessing the wxgithognathous palate, it will help to keep both 
writer and reader from embarrassment if we take next the lowest forms of the true but 
rough-voiced Coracomorphe, all of them belonging to the “ Notogea ”—old types inha- 
biting the New World. 
The lowest of these is the Lyre-bird; at least it is the most abnormal in relation to 
the egithognathous type; and, supposing it to have had an ancestry amongst extinct 
“'Turnicomorphe,” they must have been far less passerine, and much more related to 
Tinamous and ancient Cranes than the modern forms’. 
Example 3. Menura superba. 
Habitat. Australia. Group “ Tracheophone,” Miiller ; family ‘“ Menuride.” 
What I have to say upon the affinities of this bird will be merely from what I see 
in its fore face. Other workers may see what can be done with all the rest of its 
organization. 
Side by side with Mr. Salvin’s specimen I put the skull of the Trumpeter (Psophia 
crepitans). The comparison of these two types causes the mind to waver; and how- 
ever necessary it may be to place the Lyre-bird with the Coracomorphe, yet it belongs 
evidently to the same ornithic stratum, and most probably corresponds in time to this 
ancient Crane, with its dense, almost ophidian bones, and its lacertian chain of 
“ superorbitals.” 
The basipterygoid processes are thoroughly aborted; the parasphenoidal beam 
(Pl. LVI. fig. 1, pa.s) is of moderate thickness, it projects little, in front, below the 
hinge. That subdivision of the facial axis is nearly perfect (fig. 3). In this skull, of 
a female evidently old, the nasal labyrinth in front of the hinge is unossified: it has 
been lost by maceration ; yet the remnants of it are very thin lamelle. The premaxilla 
* I say “‘ancient Cranes ;” and the probability is that these abounded in the Tertiary period. The Hurypyga 
represents one family, the Kagu another, Psophia another, and Thinocorus (and I suppose with it we must asso- 
ciate Aitagis) a fourth. 
All these are ancient types that have lost their nearest relations. They are altogether more struthious than 
the ordinary “Gruide.” Professor Newton, in a letter to me, insists that 7hinocorus belongs to the “ Limicols :” 
as to its body it does ; its head is a morphological mixture. 
