234 MR. W. K. PARKER ON THE OSTEOLOGY 



worked out, I will return to the affinities of the Baleeniceps, which still seems to me to 

 have the Heron-characters in preponderance, and to stand really between the truly 

 ardeine Cancroma and the ciconiine Scopus. 



In speaking of the gaps between living genera of birds (p. 346), I mentioned the 

 isolation of the Flamingos (Phcenicopterus) ; I am now satisfied that they were not 

 always so much alone in the class. Through the kindness of Dr. Falconer, I have 

 recently had my attention called to an excellent paper on fossil birds by the 

 younger Milne-Edwards ', in which he describes three species of an extinct genus of 

 birds closely allied to the Flamingos, on one hand, and to true water-birds on the 

 other. This new genus is named by him Palalodus. These important fossils have 

 been found in the tertiary deposits of Mayence and Auvergne. 



B. — Concluding Remarks. 



In the foregoing descriptions of the truly gallinaceous birds, frequent allusion has 

 been made to the conformity of many parts of their skulls with the like parts of those 

 of the Goose-tribe. Prior to my acquaintance with the osteology of the Palamedea, 

 there was to me no solution of this puzzling fact ; practically this difficulty is cleared, 

 and any bird which should be intermediate between the Palamedea, on one hand, and 

 either the Curassows or the Megapods on the other, would perfectly link together all 

 the birds that lie fairly between the Peacock and the Merganser. This, at first sight, 

 looks unlikely enough ; and yet, taking the skull only — the noblest part, and the great 

 centre of the organism — the correspondence between the members of this great bipolar 

 group is, embryologically, exceedingly intimate. 



But, to say nothing of the body of the bird, the superadded splint bones which go to 

 form the outworks of the skull and face, and which are subject to endless adaptive 

 modifications — these parts diffisr as extremely as in any of the most divergent bird- 

 groups. 



The skull of the Palamedea is a perfect key to all the intricacies of this matter — that 

 is, if it be studied in the light of the embryology of the Fowl and of the Duck or Goose. 

 The only great and important difl^erence between the primordial cartilaginous skull and 

 its facial rods in the one group and in the other is this — that in the gosling the second 

 poststomal rods are unusually large, whilst in the chick the confluence of the occipital 

 and periotic cartilages is nearly complete : thus the tongue of the Goose becomes 

 large and flat, and the occipital plane of the Fowl wants those large fenestrse (the 

 lateral occipital fontanelles) which are seen in all the Goose-tribe, save in the Pala- 

 medea. 



But the occipital condyle, the basitemporal floor, the anterior and posterior sphe- 



' M^moire sur la distribution g^ologique des Oiseaux fossiles, et description de quelques especes nouvelles, 

 par M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards (Ann. Sc. Nat. Zool. ser. iv. vol. xx. p. 133). 



