Letters, Announcements, &c. 251 
Fossil Asiatic Ostriches.—The last number of the ‘ Geolo- 
gical Magazine’ contains a very interesting article by Mr. 
William Davies, of the British Museum, upon some fossil 
bird-remains from the Siwalik Hills*. Mr. Davies, amongst 
other things, gives a good description and figure of the im- 
portant bones, in the the British Museum, upon which the 
Struthio asiaticus of A. Milne-Edwards, shortly indicated in his 
‘ Oiseaux fossiles de la France’ (11. p. 587), was based. They 
consist of a “distal end of a tarso-metatarsal of a two-toed 
bird, with the proximal half of the first phalange of the third 
toe in its natural position.” Mr. Davies tells us that the 
result of a careful comparison of the bones with the corre- 
sponding bones of the African Ostrich (Struthio camelus) is 
that, as regards form and size, they are identical. After 
giving the facts necessary to prove this to be the case, Mr. 
Davies continues as follows :— 
““ As the fragments of fossil bones above described certainly 
belong to the genus Struthio, they establish the fact, so far 
as our present knowledge extends, that the Ostrich had its 
early home in Asia, its fossil remains not having hitherto 
been found elsewhere ; also, that as regards size, the ancient 
bird was not inferior to its modern African congener, and in 
respect to the form of the bones of the limbs is indistinguish- 
able from it. This intimate resemblance tends to the infer- 
ence, if not to the assurance, that the African Ostrich is a 
direct descendant, perhaps slightly modified as regards the 
cervical vertebre, of the older Asiatic bird, which, at some 
remote period, impelled by circumstances, migrated from its 
original home to its present habitat. And, whatever the 
physical changes that necessitated the migration, it was not 
accomplished alone ; for the Giraffe, now confined exclusively 
to the African continent, had also an Asiatic origin, and has 
left its remains, associated with those of the Ostrich, in the 
same Indian deposits. 
* ‘¢On some Fossil Bird-Remains from the Siwalik Hills in the British 
Museum.” By William Davies, F.G.S., of the Geological Department, 
British Museum. (‘Geological Magazine,’ new series, decade ii. vol. vii. 
p. 18.) 
