508 PROF. W. K. PARKER ON AGITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 
lamine grow much nearer together, and more perfectly enclose the nasal tube. The 
maxillary (figs. 1 & 2, mx) is a long, narrow bone, elbowing out very little at the angle 
of the mouth, and widening very slightly where the maxillo-palatine process (fig. 4, m.2.p) 
is given off. This process has a very delicate, flat pedicle ; and the broken root of this, 
in Mr. Salvin’s specimen, appeared to me to be the whole process, very small. But, 
happily, at the last moment, Professor Garrod has corrected my mistake ; and in his 
specimens, kindly lent to me, they are seen to be unusually large and pedate, quite like 
their counterparts in the Corvide. They are not pneumatic; but in Corvus they are very 
slightly so. 
The long slender jugals are ankylosed to the jugal process of the maxillary. The 
nasals (7) and the large external nasal opening are altogether and thoroughly coraco- 
morphous. Let these parts be compared with those of a Robin or a Wren, and their 
close correspondence will be seen. 
But the ethmoid and its surroundings are the real stumbling-blocks in this bird; and 
if this part had been placed in my hands as an unnamed fragment, it would have taken 
a place close by Psophia. Yet the antorbital plate fits much more closely to the large 
spongy lacrymal (/) in Menura than in Psophia. In both there is, in this bone, a large 
superorbital portion, joined by a narrow waist to a pedate base, close to the jugum. 
In Psophia the antorbital runs into the osseous back wall of the upper turbinal; in 
Menura it is quite distant from the roof; a large oblong space, through which the 
olfactory and nasal nerves (1, 5, 5’) pass, extends from the meso-ethmoid to the inner 
face of the lacrymal. 
The antorbital is wholly ossified (fig. 3, p.p), it is square, entirely lies within the 
orbit, and has a rounded infero-external angle, with no sign of an ‘‘ os uncinatum ;” 
this is aborted by the pedate base of the lacrymal; yet there is in that bone, in front 
of the angle of the antorbital, an elegant pyriform lobe, with its narrow end looking in- 
wards, whose direction is towards the ecto-ethmoid. This is undoubtedly the same as the 
distinct “os uncinatum” of many birds. At the brow-edge of the great lacrymal there 
is a larger anterior and a smaller posterior superorbital. In Psophia there are seven such 
bones on one (the left) side; on the other they are ankylosed so as to form only five. 
All the three orbital bones of J/enwra come up flush with the broad, flat frontal 
region (fig. 2, f. 7, s.ob). There is one superorbital perched on the end of the long spur 
of the lacrymal in Eagles and Hawks; but a chain of bones, reduced here to three 
counting the lacrymal, is very rare; Psophia and the Tinamous are all I have seen with 
such a chain’. 
And now it may be asked, If Turnix be taken as a sort of stock form for the whole 
of the “ AAgithognathe” how is it that J/enura is in some respects lower than Turniax? 
‘ Since the above was written I have received from James Wood-Mason, Esq., his paper on the Arboricole 
(Wood-Partridges). He has found a perfect chain-of superorbitals in four out of the eight known species of 
that genus (see Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol. xliii. part 2, plate 2, 1874). 
