OF GALLINACEOUS BIRDS AND TINAMOUS. 159 



feeble as usual, the former being unusually long. The posterior half of the frontal and 

 the whole of the parietal region is curiously sinuous and uneven ; yet the oval emi- 

 nences answering to the highest part of the cerebral hemispheres are well shown. The 

 whole of the anterior frontal region is much elevated, and the superorbital still more so, 

 the general surface being at this part almost scabrous with risings and depressions ; 

 whilst the entire superorbital ridge is broken up into rough bosses that send their bony 

 matter into the very thick, wide superorbital membrane, which, stretching from the 

 lachrymal to the postfrontal process, gives the anterior part of the top of the head a 

 width equal to what obtains in the Parrots. 



The lachrymal, which reminds one of that of the Talegnlla in the abortion of its 

 descending process, is also thick and knobbed, and is incurved at its edge : the size 

 of the superorbital plate makes up for the abortion of the descending portion. The 

 knobs along the edge of the lachrymals and frontals of Dendrortyx may, some of them, 

 have been at one time separate pieces ; but, whether or no, they are undoubtedly the 

 true homologues of the orbito-frontal denticles of the young Dotterel {Charadrius 

 hiaticula), and the dying-out of that curious lacertine (Scincoid) character which I 

 have to describe in the Tinamou, where the superorbital region is roofed in with a 

 tile-like series of bones. At the fronto-maxlllary hinge the coalesced nasal and 

 frontal mass dips suddenly and deeply down ; and there is a deep transverse sulcus 

 above the hinge. As in the Quail, but still more pronounced, the premaxillary is 

 exceedingly stout, highly arched, and short, the nasal aperture very large and almost 

 circular, and the angles of the premaxillary stop suddenly behind the descending crus 

 of the nasal. 



The feeble prevomerine bones, malars, and quadrato-jugals are perfectly typical ; 

 and the facets formed by the squamosal and prootic for the single head of the os qua- 

 dratum lie in a perfect acetabulum. The mandible, answering to the premaxilla, is 

 very strong, is typical, and has the membranous space wholly obliterated. Now, in 

 the marvellously strong lower jaw of the Cock of the Woods {Tetrao urogallus) this 

 space is 14 lines long by 4 lines broad — the external angular process in the same jaw 

 being full an inch long, and the thicker internal process half an inch ; so that the size 

 of that oval space in the mandible — arising from the curious manner in which the 

 dentary breaks into two long crura at its middle, and to the abortive development of 

 the " splenial " piece — is a very good and safe tetraonine character. The whole of the 

 sternal apparatus of Dendrortyx is extremely elegant and delicate : the furculum, 

 coracoids, and scapulae are all long, narrow, and light. The epi-, hyo-, and hyposternals 

 all have the like delicacy of build, the latter being relatively shorter than in the Grey 

 Partridge (PI. XLI. figs. 9, 10). The inner hyposternal piece, instead of being bowed 

 out as in the Partridge (answering to the thicker body), is quite straight ; and the 

 horizontal part of the great entoxiphisternal portion of the bone is relatively as much 

 pared away, as it were, as in the Tinamou (PI. XLI. fig. 1). 



VOL. V. PART III. T' 



