308 PROF. W. K. PARKER ON ^GITHOGNATHOFS BIRDS. 



laminfe grow much nearer together, and more perfectly enclose the nasal tube. The 

 maxillary (figs. 1 & 2, mx) is a long, narrow bone, elbowing out very little at the angle 

 of the mouth, and widening very slightly where the maxillo-palatine process (fig. 4, nix.j')) 

 is given off. This process has a very delicate, flat pedicle ; and the broken root of this, 

 in Mr. Salvin's specimen, appeared to me to be the whole process, very small. But, 

 happily, at the last moment. Professor Garrod has corrected my mistake ; and in his 

 specimens, kindly lent to me, they are seen to be unusually large and pedate, quite like 

 their counterparts in the Corvidse. They are not pneumatic ; but in Corvics they are very 

 slightly so. 



The long slender jugals are ankylosed to the jugal process of the maxillary. The 

 nasals (n) and the large external nasal opening are altogether and thoroughly coraco- 

 morphous. Let ,these parts be compared with those of a Robin or a Wren, and their 

 close correspondence will be seen. 



But the ethmoid and its surroundings are the real stumbling-blocks in this bird ; and 

 if this part had been placed in my hands as an unnamed fragment, it would have taken 

 a place close by Psophia. Yet the antorbital plate fits much more closely to the large 

 spongy lacrymal (/) in Menura than in Psophia. In both there is, in this bone, a large 

 superorbital portion, joined by a narrow waist to a pedate base, close to the jugum. 

 In Psophia the antorbital runs into the osseous back wall of the upper turbinal ; in 

 Menura it is quite distant from the roof; a large oblong space, through which the 

 olfactory and nasal nerves (1, 5, 5') pass, extends from the meso-ethmoid to the inner 

 face of the lacrymal. 



The antorbital is wholly ossified (fig. 3, jy.p), it is square, entirely lies within the 

 orbit, and has a rounded infero-external angle, with no sign of an " os uncinatum ;" 

 this is aborted by the pedate base of the lacrymal ; yet there is in that bone, in front 

 of the angle of the antorbital, an elegant pyriform lobe, with its narrow end looking in- 

 wards, whose direction is towards the ecto-ethmoid. This is undoubtedly the same as the 

 distinct " os uncinatum " of many birds. At the brow-edge of the great lacrymal there 

 is a larger anterior and a smaller posterior superorbital. In Psophia there are seven such 

 bones on one (the left) side ; on the other they are ankylosed so as to form only five. 



All the three orbital bones of Menura come up flush with the broad, flat frontal 

 region (fig. 2, /. I, s.ob). There is one superorbital perched on the end of the long spur 

 of the lacrymal in Eagles and Hawks ; but a chain of bones, reduced here to three 

 counting the lacrymal, is very rare; Psophia and theTinamous are all I have seen with 

 such a chain'. 



And now it may be asked. If Timiix be taken as a sort of stock form for the whole 

 of the " Jigithognathse," how is it that Menura is in some respects lower than Turnix 1 



• Since the above was written I have received from James Wood-Mason, Esq., his paper on the ArboricoliE 

 (Wood-Partridges). He has found a perfect chain of superorhitals in four out of the eight known species of 

 that genus (see Journ. Asint. Soc. Bengal, vol. sliii. part 2, plate 2, 1874). 



