294 ■ PROF. W. K. PARKER ON ^GITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 



Besides these " vomerine " or labial cartilages, there is what I shall freely illustrate 

 here as the " recurrent trabecular lamina ;" this is formed by the apices of the recurrent 

 trabecular cornua, which have coalesced. 



The first group I now take up will make these matters clear to the reader, and will 

 also give us the most rudimentary and reptilian condition of the nasal labyrinth — one 

 very important part of the present subject. 



On the Morphology of the Face in the " Tuenicomorph^." 



I have had rare opportunities lately for studying this peculiar group of birds, and 

 can correct some things in which I was misled in my former paper (" On the Galli- 

 naceous Birds," Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. v. p. 172). 



A few years since my friend Mr. Swinhoe, Consul at Amoy, sent me some young spe- 

 cimens of Tnrnix rostrata, from Formosa, in spirits ; Mr. Salvin has put into my hands 

 a very perfect skeleton of Hemipodius varius, in which the nasal cartilages are preserved 

 in a dry state ; and I have also the separate parts of the skull of a young Hemijiodlus 

 varius, the gift of Dr. Murie. 



If the palate of the young Turnix (PI. LIV. fig. 1) be compared with that of the 

 Syrrhaptes, Grouse, Plover, and Pigeon, already referred to as figured in my former 

 paper, it will be seen at a glance that these birds have much in common ; they belong, 

 evidently, to one morphological stratum, or nearly so. But the Turnix is the lowest 

 of these types ; and it would seem as if he and his compeers were the waifs and strays 

 of a large and widely distributed group of birds only a little higher in the scale than 

 the Tinamous. 



From such a group, largely extinct, the Sand-Grouse may have arisen ; from such a 

 stock the Plovers ; and these old types may also be looked upon as zoologically paternal 

 to several other modern families, the greatest of these being the Passerines. As to the 

 relation of the Hemipods to existing types, I cannot do better than refer the reader to 

 Professor Huxley's paper on the " Alectoromorphae " (Zool. Proc. 1868, pp. 302-304). 



There, however, no suspicion has been given as to the meaning of the broad " vomer " 

 in relation to the Passerines ; it is merely compared to that of the Grouse — not of 

 Lagojnis, but of Tetrao urogallus (see " On the Classification of Birds " Proc. Zool. Soc. 

 1867, p. 432, fig. 140). But even that vomer is a poor representative of that of the 

 Hemipod, and for some years it has been a mystery to me because of its passerine 

 form. 



The flat-faced stump of the bone which in Hemipodius binds on each side the 

 trabecular to the palatine arch — " basi-pterygoid process " (PI. LIV. figs. 1 & 9 i.j^ff) — 

 accords exactly in place and size with that of the Pigeon and Plover, and is less 

 struthious than that of Syrrhaptes. 



The parasphenoidal bar (fig. 1, pa.s) is rather massive in the young; but in the old 



