PROF. W. K. PARKER ON ©®GITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 309 
To this I answer that the existing “'Turnicomorphe” are most probably a few re- 
maining wanderers, that still exist from Europe to Australia, of a huge family of birds 
of all sizes, in great variety of shape, and specialized to all sorts of life. We may 
imagine innumerable kinds of Struthionide, Tinamide, Turnicide, and that “ by these 
was the whole earth overspread,” and that amongst all this variety of “ Ratite,” and 
of “Carinate” with almost keelless breast-bones, there arose from time to time birds 
with new characters, the stocks and forefathers of walking, wading, swimming, diving, 
perching, and climbing types: hence came the Dodo and the Solitaire ; and from the 
same ancient bird-world sprung the gigantic Rails of New Zealand (Aptornis defossor, 
Owen, and Notornis Mantelli). 
The direct ancestors, in the wide paleontological sense of the word, of the Lyre- 
bird would most likely have a huge body, feeble wings, a less exuberant tail, an 
almost keelless breast-bone, bony eye-brows, and a vomer more pointed and relatively 
larger than in the recent bird; and that yomer would, like the same bone in Twrnia, 
be attached to the nasal walls by a ligament, and not grafted upon it. 
Then, on that level, possessing incomplete “egithognathism,” such a bird might 
haye belonged to a family allied to the “'Turnicomorphe.” 
Example 4. Pipra auricapilla. 
Habitat. Guiana. Group “ Tracheophone,” Miiller; family “ Cotingide.” 
This bird may be said to stand on the direct road from the lower Carinatz to the 
Crows, and not on the dridle-path, like Menura. 
The bat-shaped swollen basitemporals (4.¢) underlie a thick parasphenoid (Pl. LVII. 
fig. 1, pa.s), with no trace of basipterygoid process; then the beam becomes gradually 
narrow to the cranio-facial hinge. In front of the hinge, which is as complete as in 
the Crow, there is an alate septal base (t") also perfectly corvine. A fenestra partially 
separates the trabecular from the nasal part of the septum; below and behind the 
fenestra this part of the first arch had its own bony centre; in front and above, the 
bony matter belongs to the median part of the nasal labyrinth. A perforate nostril is 
here formed by the round deep notch below the alate septum (¢7) and the recurrent 
fold (figs. 1 & 3, rc.c). Although the septum is so well ossified, the rest of the nasal 
labyrinth, in front of the hinge, is-soft. 
The gently curved beak has an almost triangular outline (fig. 1); and although its 
elements are ankylosed together, the various processes can be made out; the palatine 
bars of the premaxillaries (p.pr) end in a sharp point; the dentary processes (d.pa) 
overlap the maxillaries (mx) at the angle of the mouth; and the nasal processes have 
shortened ends to articulate with the frontals. Here, again, the vomer (figs. 1 & 2, v) is 
the most important part. 
The vomerine moieties are broadish and very thin in front, and become filiform be- 
hind. This part is three fifths the length of the whole; and their crura are very near 
