380 RevieiDs — R. Lydelcker-'s Catalogue of Fossil Birds. 



a Solan Goose, which had the margins of the bones of both the 

 upper and lower jaws coarsely serrated, and was no doubt also a 

 large fish-eating Bird. Numerous remains of carinate Birds are 

 represented in the Collection by detached bones from various localities 

 and deposits, all of Tertiary age, and many of them referred to 

 existing genera. The Great Auk (^Alca impennis) is recorded 

 from a guano deposit on Funk Island off the coast of Newfound- 

 land ; nearly all the bones with the exception of the phalange^ 

 are preserved ; this is one of a dozen or more individuals found by 

 Professor John Milne, F.R.S. 



By far the most important part of the Collection, if we except 

 the Archceopteryx,, consists of the remains of the Ratite Birds, the 

 ^pyornis of Madagascar being represented by two species, namely, 

 jE. maximus, casts of the femur, the tibio-tarsus, and the tarso- 

 metatarsal bones, reproduced from types in the Paris Museum ; the 

 shaft of an actual bone, and an entire egg, 36 inches in longest 

 circumference by 30-3 inches in girth ; and ^. medius, an egg, 30-3 

 inches in longest circumference, and 26-3 inches in girth. 



The Indian Ostrich {Struthio Asiaticus), from the Pliocene of 

 the Siwalik Hills, is represented by a conjoined mass of bones, 

 comprising nine cervical vertebrte in natural juxtaposition, some 

 imperfect bones of the wing, and the distal portion of the right 

 tarso-metatarsus, together with the greater portion of the proximal 

 phalangeal of the third digit in apposition with the latter. The 

 Dasornis Londiniensis is only known by the cranium from the 

 London Clay of Sheppey ; but taken in connexion with the discovery 

 of the limb-bones of another Struthious Bird, the Gastornis Klaasseni, 

 in the Lower Eocene of Croydon, Surrey, we may conclude that 

 Ostrich-like Birds lived in this country, and also in France and 

 Belgium, in Eocene times. Of the great flightless birds of New 

 Zealand, no fewer than six skeletons have been set up in the 

 Gallery, representing at least five species ; there is also a very large 

 collection of detached bones referred to some twenty different 

 species, all described by Prof. Owen. Some of these remains are 

 so recent as to be still covered with dried skin and traces of feathers, 

 showing that their extermination in those islands must have been 

 of very modern date, and no doubt due to the hand of man. 



Owen's genus Dinornis, we observe, has been subdivided by 

 Lydekker into five genera ; but we venture to question the desirability 

 of this course, seeing how great is the individual diversity presented 

 by the skeletons of these large running Birds ; we incline rather to 

 the view that they are the result of local variation produced by 

 scarcity or abundance of food and the nature of their habitat ; even 

 difference of sex may account for size and robustness in individuals. 



Whilst on the subject of nomenclature, we would also question 

 the right to substitute H. von Meyer's specific name lithographica 

 for ArchcBopteryx macrura, the latter name having been given to 

 the original skeleton of the long-tailed Bird from Solenhofen by 

 Owen, whereas Meyer's name was only applied to a detached 

 feather of some Bird found in the same deposit a year or two 

 previously. The only justification which we can conceive for this 



