206 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE OSTEOLOGY 



pressions were that the short-winged Rails would yield us the best inosculants ; and I 

 still vividly remember the joy and satisfaction I felt at the first sight of the skeleton of 

 Brachypteryx. It is now twenty years since a comparison of the structure of both the 

 old and young Emu with that of the Gallinule showed me a correspondence in many 

 points of structure between the skulking, foolish birds of the struthious type and the 

 beautiful Waterhen — a bird so soon at its wits' end, and so easily intercepted and caught. 

 At present, however, I have not found that very close correspondence between the 

 Ostriches and Rails which, in my youthful days, I confidently expected. I have not 

 yet studied the Notornis and the Palapteryx carefully — only the living types, e. g. Bra- 

 chypteryx, Tribonyx, and Ocydromus. The Rail, however, only wants to be arrested at 

 a certain embryonic stage, and then we should have the missing link. 



Mere arrest of a Ralline bird, however, would not yield us anything nearly so 

 struthious as the bird we have to consider in this part of our paper : with that arrest 

 thei'e must also be a retention of some of the nature of the reptile, and an anticipation 

 of some of the characters of the mammal : moreover the Rails are more nearly related 

 to the Penguins than to the Ostriches. 



At the dawn of the very day on which T received from Dr. Sclater the priceless 

 skeleton of the Tinamou, I was ruminating upon the possibility of the existence of a 

 bird in which the gallinaceous and struthious natures should be blended. The unrais- 

 takeable evidence of a certain struthious tincture (such as I had seen in no other bird) 

 in the skull of the Syrrhaptes, combined with the mingling of the blood of various 

 types in that mixed bird and in the Hemipods — these things put together caused me to 

 have a day-dream of the existence of some Cock-and-Ostrich mule. On that day my 

 dream came true. I foresee that there will be opposition in the minds of some ; for 

 there are cultivators of zoology, as well as of theology, who have the greatest powers of 

 disbelief; but shall their unbelief make the truth of none effect? 



My work, let it be understood, is simply positive ; I deal neither in matters that 

 relate to efficient causes, nor have I any immediate business with the doctrine of final 

 causes : the pure anatomist, for the time being, does not ask how nor why these things 

 came about. 



The horny sheaths of the mandible of Tinamus rohustus correspond exactly with 

 those of the typical Ostriches ; there is a curious invagination of the culmen of the 

 bill into the base. In the Tinamou the base is large in proportion to the produced 

 and ensheathed part, and the alinasal cartilages project more than in the large 

 species; this fulness of the "wings of the nose" is a gallinaceous character. The 

 whole culmen and "neb" is separated from the sides of the upper jaw by a well- 

 marked groove, which is repeated in the lower jaw : the upper grooves lead backwards 

 into the nostrils. This is so exactly like what is seen in the Ostriches, that the 

 ensheathed part has only to be produced into a longer beak, and the face of the Apteryx 

 is seen at once. There are certain curious, thoroughly marine Plovers (Chionis), in 



