254 PEOFESSOE OWEI^ ON CNEMIOENIS. 



in a more perfect state than were some of those bones — as, e. g., the sternum and pelvis 

 therein described and represented. The most instructive additional bones of this second 

 series were an almost entire skull and a humerus, the latter showing that the bone 

 referred to Cnemiornis in the description of pi. Ixiv. {torn, cit.) must have belonged 

 to some other, apparently similar-sized, flightless bird, which I deem to have been 

 probably an A])tornis, inasmuch as a few bones referable to that genus were included in 

 the collection sent to me in 1864 from Timaru. For this instructive accession to the 

 evidences of Cnemiornis {toni. cit. p. 395) ornithology is indebted to the Hon. Captain 

 Fraser, F.R.G.S., who has consigned an account of the cave in which the bones were 

 discovered to the 'Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' vol. v. (1872)'. 



The ' Notes ' by Dr. Hector on these remains, now in the Museum of the Wellington 

 Philosophical Society, have been published in the 'Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society of London,' Part I. 1874. 



Having since had the opportunity of examining portions of two crania, certain ribs, 

 humeri, and a metacarpus of other individuals of Cnemiornis, I can testify to the accuracy 

 of the figures of those bones given by Dr. Hector ; and to bis ' Notes ' my later acqui- 

 sitions enable me to add descriptions and figures of an ulna and an almost entire coracoid 

 of Cnemiornis. The more perfect of my two skulls includes also the roof and fore 

 (lacrymal) ]5art of the orbits, wanting in Dr. Hector's figure : and I believe, therefore, 

 that a description of these specimens confirming Dr. Hector's demonstration of the 

 former existence of a very large, not to say gigantic. Anserine bird in New Zealand 

 will not be unacceptable, inasmuch as in their description comparisons will be made 

 with the skulls of other Lamellirostrals, more especially of the flightless Duck [Tachy- 

 eres^ brachypterus, Latham) of Magellan's Strait, and of the Cereopsis cinereus of 

 A"ustralia. The latter bird is notable among Anserines for the length of its legs and 

 shortness of its bill ; and it appears to me more terrestrial in its habits than most of its 

 living congeners. 



§ 2. Skull. 

 The occipital surface of the skull of Cnemiornis is remarkable, in the present com- 

 parative series, for its breadth, especially at its base, here due to the outward expansion 

 of the paroccipitals (PI. XXXV. fig. 2, 4, i), in which feature the skull of Tachyeres is 



' ' A description of the Eamsclougli Moa-Cave,' p. 102. (This cave is in the interior of the province of 

 Otago.) 



^ The generic name Mieroptenis, applied by Lesson in 183] to the Anas hrachyptera of Latham, was bespoken 

 by Laoepede, in 1302, for a genus of Fishes. Microptera was applied by Gravenhorst, in the same year, to a 

 family of pentamerons Coleoptera, and by Eobin, in 1830, to a genus of Diptera. ■Mkroptenj.v was given by 

 Hiibner, in 1816, to a genus of Lepidoptera, and by Agassiz, in 1829, to a genus of Fishes. The name above 

 proposed for a subgenerio type of Anatidje, as well-marked as any of those to which terms indicative of such 

 distinction have been applied, is derived from raxvfipvs, swift rower, and relates to the characteristic move- 

 ments of Latham's species in water, which has obtained for it, from navigators, the name of " Steamer Duck." 



