164 
the secondary intermuscular ridges, the commencement of the keel 
a little way behind the anterior margin of the sternum, Mr. Owen 
says there is no affinity with the brachypterous family. The cora- 
coid bones or posterior clavicles, he also shows are less available in 
determining the habits of the Ornitholite, as they relate much more 
closely to the respiratory actions than to the movements of the 
wings, and are strongly developed even in the Apteryx. There re- 
mained consequently for comparison the ordinary birds of flight ; 
and of these, the native species, which resemble the fossil in size, 
first claimed Mr. Owen’s attention. Though the sternum is not 
complete, yet sufficient remains to have enabled him to set aside the 
Gallinaceous, and those Grallatorial and Passerine birds which have 
deeply incised sternums, and to restrict the field of comparison to 
such species as have the sternum either entire, or with shallow pos- 
terior emarginations. After a rigid comparison of the minor struc- 
tural details and pursuing it from the sea gulls and other aquatic 
birds upwards through the Grallatorial and Passerine orders, omitting 
few British species, and no genus, he at length found the greatest 
number of correspondences in the skeleton of the accipitrine spe- 
cies. The resemblance, however, was not sufficiently close to ad- 
mit of the fossil being referred to any native genus of Raptores: the 
breadth of the proximal end of the coracoid removes it from the 
owls (Strigide), the shaft of the same bone is too slender for the 
Falconide ; and the femur and tibia are relatively weaker than in 
many of the British Hawks or Buzzards. It is with the Vultures 
that Mr. Owen has found the closest agreement; but he says the 
fossil indicates a smaller species than any known to exist in the 
present day, and is probably a distinct subgenus. 
The professed ornithologist, Mr. Owen remarks, may receive 
with reasonable hesitation a determination of family affinities arrived 
at, in the absence of the usual characters deduced from the beak 
and feet; but in the course of a long series of close comparisons, he 
says, he has met with so many more characters, both appreciable and 
available in the present problem, than he anticipated, that he confi- 
dently expects, in the event of the mandibles, the bones of the feet, 
or the entire sternum of the bird in question being found, they will 
establish his present conclusion, that the Sheppey ornitholite is re- 
ferrible to a member of the group of Accipitrine Scavengers, so 
abundant in the warmer latitudes of the present world. 
The: Ornitholite in Mr. Bowerbank’s museum consists of ten sa- 
cral vertebrze anchylosed together, as is usual in birds with a con- 
tinuous keel-like spinal ridge. Four of the vertebree are analogous 
to the lumbar vertebrze in the mammalia, and they are succeeded by 
five others, in which, as in the Vultures, the inferior transverse pro- 
cesses are not developed. This character, however, Mr. Owen says, 
is not peculiar to the Vulturide. Though the part of the fossil pre- 
served is eminently characteristic of the class of birds, yet it is not 
calculated to throw light on the closer affinities of the species to 
which it belongs: nevertheless it supports rather than affects the 
