1900. ] SHUFELDT—OSTEOLOGY OF THE WOODPECKERS. 581 
Garrod saw the vomer of Gecinus viridis in the bone which 
Parker designates as his ‘‘ medio-palatine,’’ and of the ‘‘ vomers’’ 
of Parker, Garrod has said that ‘‘they look much/more like the 
inner edges of the imperfectly ossified palatines.’’ Both opinions 
are candid, and simply point to a difference of opinion in a matter 
of identity.’ 
Still another view: the distinguished ornithotomist Max Fiir- 
bringer divides his order Coracornithes into three suborders, of 
which the first is the Prco-Passeriformes ; and these latter are again 
divided into three groups, the first of which is the Pico-Passeres. 
Now he subdivides the Prco-Passeres into the Price and Passeres, 
and makes the Pzez include four families, viz., the Capzfonide, the 
Rhamphastide, the Indicatoride and the Picide. The Picid@e here 
include the two subfamilies, the /ywgzne@ and the Picine. With 
this brief recapitulation of the opinions of former writers, I will 
now proceed to examine the extensive North American material 
before. me, describe what I find in due order, and, as usual, present 
what it seems to indicate to me. 
Or THE SKULL AND ASSOCIATED BONES IN THE PICID#. 
As an introduction to this part of the skeleton, I select a series 
of skulls taken from adult and nestling specimens of Co/aptes mexz- 
canus. These are very perfect and have the hyoid arches and 
other bones of the sense organs associated with them. 
In Colaptes the premaxillary, slightly decurved throughout, is 
broad at the base and gradually tapers to its apex. It is composed 
of dense bone, but apparently not much more so than are the other 
bones of the face. On the proximal moiety of the culmen, the 
median suture is persistent at all ages of the bird, while laterally, 
upon either side, the premaxillary, assisted by the nasal, surrounds 
an elongated, subelliptical narial aperture of no small size. The 
internarial space is largely filled in by the irregular bones of the 
turbinal series and by an imperfect, though true, nasal septum. 
1 Compare both text and figures of Prof. Parker’s memoir on the “ Morphology 
of the Skull in the Woodpeckers and Wrynecks” (Zrans. Linn. Soc, Lond., 
read 1874) with Garrod’s «* Note on Some of the Cranial Peculiarities of the 
Woodpeckers” (/é7d., 1872, pp. 357-360, and his Coll, Scientific Memoirs, pp. 
117-119), and the figure which illustrates the latter. 
2 For the details of this classification, see his Untersuchungen 2ur Morphologie 
und Systematik der Vogel, published at Amsterdam in 1888. 
