PROF. W. K. PARKER ON 2AGITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 319 
American types; it is as if its father had been a Grallaria and its mother a Pitta, but 
to become an Artamus it had risen higher in the ornithic scale than either of its parents. 
Example 10. Dendrocolaptes albicollis, Vieill., 3. 
Habitat. Brazil. Group ‘“ Tracheophonee,” Miiller ; family “ Dendrocolaptide.” 
Mr. Salvin’s collection yields me five types of this kind of Southern passerine, in 
which the egithognathism is of the first or distinct variety of the complete kind; the 
members of this family and of the “ Tyrannide” seem to me to stand near to, but in 
reality higher than the “ Formicariide ;” I speak thus, however, rather of their facial 
morphology than as an ornithologist. 
In some of these, as in my present instance, the basipterygoids are indicated by spurs 
of the basitemporal (Pl. LIX. fig. 1, 0.¢, b.pg). At first sight this seems a trifle; but 
morphology has no trifles: it is a Lacertian stigma. Every student knows that the 
innermost lamine of the massive “ parosteal” basitemporals of the bird become the 
practical symmorphs of the Lizard’s basisphenoids—symmetrical ectostoses ; also that, 
whilst in the bird the basipterygoids are ossified by the parasphenoidal rostrum, in the 
Lizard they are hardened directly from the basisphenoids. In our ascent from the less 
developed to more highly metamorphosed types, we constantly come across this 
“changing of hands,” in the finish of a part. That Dendrocolaptes should have the 
Lacertian character is like a touch of “atavism;” it can scarcely be other than a 
delicate link in a long evolutional chain. The strong, rounded parasphenoid (Pl. LIX. 
fig. 1, pa.s) is short in this long-faced bird; it forms the underbalk to a very massive, 
non-fenestrate interorbital septum. 
The ossification of the nasal labyrinth is very similar to that of Grallaria; but I find 
no trabecular bone ; the upper septal ossification is less; and so is that behind, on the 
upper turbinal; that on the inferior turbinal is larger. 
The ale nasi outside are quite soft; but their turbinals have each a long endosteal 
tract, as in Grallaria (see Pl. LVI. fig. 9; and Pl. LIX. figs. 1 & 2, a.tb). I find no 
subnasal alz to the thin knife-like cartilaginous septum nasi: the fenestra separating it 
from the meso-ethmoid (fig. 3, p. ¢, c.f. c, s. n) has become a “notch” by extension 
downwards of the cleft, such a closed cleft as is seen in Grallaria (Pl. LVI. fig. 10, ¢.f. ¢). 
In this respect Dendrocolaptes has risen above those “ Formicariide;” but in its 
egithognathism it is below them ; for I cannot find any advance of the bony matter of 
the vomer into the turbinals; it stops quite short. ‘The vomer (v) is very curious, its 
coalesced part being very wide and short, and its legs almost close together. A small 
septo-maxillary (fig. 2, s.mx) is seen intervening between the outer angle of the upper 
vomerine lobe and the extremity of the alinasal turbinal. ‘The flat, broad, closely 
clinging vomerine crura are ankylosed to the ethmo-palatine plates; the angular process 
on each side, in front, is articulated obliquely and strongly to the mavxillo-palatine, in 
the manner of a zygapophysis. ‘The ankylosis of the secondary bones of the upper Jaw 
