150 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE OSTEOLOGY 



ture. Such birds also yield to man the greatest delight ; they always have been, and 

 always will be cherished by us, whatever be our age or our degree of general culture ; 

 and one of the saddest descriptions of a waste and deserted country has its gloominess 

 and desolateness wrought to the deepest degree of shade by this one short sentence — 



" And all the birds of the heavens were fled." 



Macgillivray' was perfectly right in laying great stress upon the structure of the 

 digestive and vocal organs, — the former relating to the food and therefore the habits 

 and instincts of the bird, the latter forming a correct measure and index of the higher 

 ornithic qualifications and accomplishments. For as that speaking, singing, mocking 

 animal, Man, is the culmination of the Mammalian series, so that bird in which the 

 gifts of speech, song, and mockery are combined must be considered as the top and 

 crown of the bird-class. But the digestive organs failed me just where I wanted them 

 to be most oracular, viz. in the case of the Syrrhaptes. If I had sat down contented 

 with what the digestive organs of that bird revealed, I should have said, it is simply a 

 Grouse. But its vocal organs do not coincide with those of the " Tetraonidse "; they 

 agree with those of Pigeons and Plovers. The study of its osseous construction reveals 

 much more than this, as I shall show hereafter. Yet nothing could be more puzzling 

 than a mere acquaintance with the condition of the adult condition of the bones of 

 birds, especially those of the skull proper : an acquaintance with, not one, but many 

 stages of the beautiful framework is necessary. I will give an instance to show the 

 bearing of these remarks. 



I had long been in the habit of watching the marvellous gracefulness and ease of the 

 flight of the pure-breasted Sea-Gulls, and of comparing them with the Lapwing, — when 

 one day it rushed back to my recollection that many years ago I had found their skele- 

 tons to have much in common. Having procured a series of young Gulls (Larus 

 argentatus and L. ridibundus), I found, upon careful dissection, that the skull and the 

 bones of the face in these pulli corresponded, not only with those of the young, but also 

 of the full-grown Lapwing and Golden Plover. The skull of the adult Gull, or even of 

 one but two months old, would not have revealed this ; for these birds have scarcely 

 acquired the power of flight before the most marked pluvialine characters have been 

 effaced. The acquisition of a more vulturine cast of face, the longer jaws, the hooked 

 bill, and the absorption of certain parts of the outer table of the bones of the spine to 

 admit air is in perfect harmony with the obliteration of the anterior pterygoid processes^ 

 and their corresponding peduncles on the pterygoids, and with the fiUing-in by bone 

 of the lateral occipital fontanelles, which are so large and open in the embryonic Gull 

 and in the adult Lapwing. (P). XXXVII. figs. 1, 2, & 4.) 



' History of British Birds, vol. i. p. 52, and in many other parts of that excellent work. 

 ' It is very curious to find that the atlas and axis of the Gulls are medullary bones ; this may be seen ij 

 Larus ridibundus, L. canus, and L. maximus. 



