426 MR. E. LYDEKKER ON THE SKULL [Mar. 15, 



The paddle exhibited measures 370 niiDimetres ; a small piece 

 ■of the proximal extremity of the humerus is broken off, and a few 

 of the distal phalangeals appear to be missing. 



The specimen has been presented by Mr, Lansdown to the 

 British Museum. 



P.S. — Mr. Horace B. Woodward, F.R.S., has kindly examined 

 the matrix of the specimen, which called to his mind that of some 

 layers of the Lower Lias of Weston near Bath, and on comparing 

 it with samples collected at that locality he found it to agree as 

 closely as possible. The beds are noted in the Memoir on 

 Jurassic Rocks of Britain, vol. iii. p. 134. — G. A. B., 19.3.04. 



Mr. A. E. Pratt exhibited a series of skins of Paradise-birds 

 which he had recently collected in the Owen Stanley range, 

 British New Guinea ; also a series of photographs taken by his 

 son during a two years' residence amongst the natives near the 

 frontier of German 'New Guinea. 



The following papers were read : — 



1. Note on the Skull and Markings of the Quagga 

 By E. Lydekkek. 



[Received Februaiy 27, 1904.J 



(Text-figures 84-86.) 



Reailers of the late Sir William Flower's excellent little volume 

 on ' The Horse ' will not fail to remember how assiduously the 

 author endeavovired to bring into prominence all evidence of the 

 ancestral history of the family displayed by its existing members. 

 I shall therefore be only emphasising Sir William's own line of 

 investigation if I dii-ect attention to an oversight in regard to one 

 particular vestigial feature met with in certain living members of 

 the Equidce. 



On page 64 of the work in question, which was published in 

 1891, will be found a statement to the effect that although the 

 skvills of Hipparion and certain other extinct representatives of 

 the family display a preorbital depression for a face-gland com- 

 parable to the larmier of the Deer, yet that no traces of such a 

 pit are to be found in any of the existing species of the family. 

 From this presumed absence of any trace of the face-gland of 

 Hipparion in existing forms of Equus, it has been urged that the 

 latter genus cannot be the lineal descendant of the former. 



The fact that the late Professor Huxley* in 1870 indicated 

 the existence of a rudimentary preorbital pit in the skull of 

 Eqtms sivalensis might have been cited in disproof of the inference 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvi. Proceedings, p. 1. 



