1882. ] DR. W. BLASIUS ON BIRDS FROM CERAM. 697 
extinct wingless birds from Dinornis. So, likewise, with parts of 
the skeleton which are connected with the sternum. 
The coracoid in Ocydromus, Notornis, Aptornis, and Apterysx' 
unites with the scapula at angles progressively detracting from the 
power of the muscles inserted into the humerus for the raising and 
protracting the wing. The coracoids, besides change of position, also 
lose in relative size, especially in their proximal or sternal breadth ; 
consequently they require shorter grooves for articulation with the 
sternum ; and as the loss proceeds from the mesial angle cutwards 
a greater space intervenes between the sternal ends of the coracoids. 
Tracing the flightless birds from the Kivis to the Wood-hens, this 
interspace progressively decreases ; tracing the volant species onward 
or upward, we find in some of the best flyers that the fore border of 
the sternum ceases to co-expand with sternal expansions of the cora- 
coids, the articular grooves decussate, and the mid part of the fore 
border of the breast-bone shows a double articular groove. 
The clavicular arch, or “ merry thought,” manifests a concomitant 
loss of strength, becomes filamentary, resumes its typical character of 
parial ‘ collar-bones,” and finally disappears. 
But these gradations, with concomitant fall to keelless breast-bones, 
are related physiologically, narrowly or specially, to corresponding 
proportions of parts of the osseous and muscular systems, and, to 
similar degrees, with final loss of volant power. The food, the ovi- 
position, the nidification, and other habits of flightless terrestrial 
birds may show no corresponding samenesses. Such vital differences, 
with the several corresponding totalities of avian organization, 
disperse or rank the so-called “ Ratite”’ birds, in a natural and 
philosophical system of Ornithology, into different reduced, perhaps 
extinct, groups or orders of the class: and the well-marked modi- 
fications of form and proportion in keelless sternums, exemplified in 
plate 57 of the third volume of our ‘Transactions,’ may help to 
point the way towards the group to which their several possessors 
may be shown by future found remains to be naturally affined. 
2. On a Collection of Birds from the Isle of Ceram made by 
Dr. Platen in November and December 1881. By Dr. 
Wine Brasivs, C.M.Z.S. 
[Received November 13, 1882.] 
Dr. Platen, the traveller and naturalist, who has of late years 
become favourably known to the scientific world by his collections 
in Malacca, Borneo, and other places of the Indo-Malayan region, 
made in the month of November of last year a stay of nearly four 
weeks at Lokki, on the island of Ceram, going there from Amboina. 
He collected on this occasion forty-nine skins of birds, which have 
been transmitted to my friend Mr. A. Nehrkorn of Riddagshausen, 
and by him kindly given to me for identification and classification. 
1 Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. ii. (1838) p. 257, p 55. fig. 2. 
