306 PKOr. W. K. PAEKEE ON ^GITHOGNATHOUS BIRDS. 



narrow, thickish, scabrous, and solid, very unlike the elegant pedunculated trowel of 

 the adult bird, with its angular projections and pneumatic chamber. But it is very much 

 like its symmorph in the lower types of the Coracomorphse, which seldom become 

 pneumatic, and are but little pedunculated. 



In the figure the rest of the nasal labyrinth is indicated on the left side by dotted 

 lines ; in the adult {Sylvia cinerea) the " os uncinatum " is only obscurely marked out 

 on the rounded lower border of the pars plana. 



Having endeavoured to give both the contrast and the harmony of the lowest and the 

 highest of the birds possessing the gegithognathous palate, it will help to keep both 

 writer and reader from embarrassment if we take next the lowest forms of the true but 

 rotigh-voiced CoracomorphcC, all of them belonging to the " Notogaea " — old types inha- 

 biting the New World. 



The lowest of these is the Lyre-bii'd ; at least it is the most abnormal in relation to 

 the segithognathous typ'e ; and, supposing it to have had an ancestry amongst extinct 

 " Turnicomorphse," they must have been far less passerine, and much more related to 

 Tinamous and ancient Cranes than the modern forms'. 



Example 3. Menura superha. 



Ilahitat. Australia. Group " Tracheophonse," Miiller ; family " Menuridse." 



What I have to say upon the affinities of this bird will be merely from what I see 

 in its fore face. Other workers may see what can be done with all the rest of its 

 organization. 



Side by side with Mr. Salvin's specimen I put the skull of the Trumpeter (Psophia 

 crepitans). The comparison of these two types causes the mind to waver ; and how- 

 ever necessary it may be to place the Lyre-bird with the Coracomorphse, yet it belongs 

 evidently to the same ornithic stratum, and most probably corresponds in time to this 

 ancient Crane, with its dense, almost ophidian bones, and its lacertian chain of 

 " superorbitals." 



The basipterygoid processes are thoroughly aborted ; the parasphenoidal beam 

 (PI. LVI. fig. 1, pa.s) is of moderate thickness, it projects little, in front, below the 

 hinge. That subdivision of the facial axis is nearly perfect (fig. 3). In this skull, of 

 a female evidently old, the nasal labyrinth in front of the hinge is unossified : it has 

 been lost by maceration ; yet the remnants of it are very thin lamellse. The prsemaxilla 



' I say " ancient Cranes ;" and the probability is that these abounded in the Tertiary period. The Eunjpyga 

 represents one family, the Kagu another, Psophia another, and Thiiwcoriis (and I suppose with it we must asso- 

 ciate Aitagis) a fourth. 



All these are ancient types that have lost their nearest relations. They are altogether more struthious than 

 the ordinary " Gruidae." Professor Newton, in a letter to me, insists that Thinoeofus belongs to the " Limicolse :" 

 as to its body it does ; its head is a morphological mixture. 



