212 MR. G. P. MUDGE OX TITE MYOLOGY 



{/'si/ff/cits IcHCOcephala Nilzsch) was described, and I liiivc been unable to find any 

 record either Ijeforo or since this [)aper which deals with the subject. 



Tile reason of this neglect is not far to seek, for I suppose that the tongue is about 

 the last structure in which the zoologist would seek for characters indicative of affinity. 

 Hut yet its characters, as affording a basis for classification, have not been altogether 

 neglected, for JJaird, in his 'Review of North-American Birds,' has founded a genus, 

 Penssoglossa, upon them, and Gadow, in his paper " On the Structure of certain Birds 

 from Hawaii,'' lias laid stress on the shape and structure of the tongue. How little 

 such characters are to be relied upon at present is indicated by the diverse results 

 they have obtained, for the one would ally the CffirebidaB to the Sylvicolidse, and the 

 other to the Drepanididte. 



Further, Lucas, in the ' Auk ' for 1894, has shown that the characters of the tongue 

 of birds have neither morphological nor physiological significance, " for while the 

 skulls of two genera are widely separated their tongues are structurally alike," and 

 " while certain birds {Certhiola) may possess a tongue adapted for honey-sucking, they 

 may yet possess a distinct liking for insects." He has also shown that the *' Sandwich 

 Islands Drepanididis have a perfect tubular tongue, and some of the Meliphagidce have 

 a suctorial apparatus and could thus feed on honey and nectar if they chose. Some 

 of them, as their stomachs testify, feed on fruit, some on spiders and insects." 



In the midst of such negative results came Mivart's paper (6) on the " Hyoid Bone 

 of Parrots," in which he demonstrated that this structure did possess characters of 

 classificatory value and by means of wdiich the Loriidas were marked oft' as a group 

 distinct from the Psittacidae. Working at the myology, I have not only corroborated 

 Mivart's concliision, but also that of Beddard and Parsons which was based upon a 

 study of the patagial tendons and the bronchial rings, and have further arrived at 

 results which, as I trust to show in the course of this paper, justify us in using the 

 characters of the tongue for purposes of classification. 



With respect to the literature, the earliest paper on the subject is by von Giebel (i), 

 who in 1858 described and figured the hyoid bones of several species of Parrots which 

 were then included under the genus Psittacus. In 1S62 Nitzsch published a paper 

 entitled " Zur Anatomie der Papageien " (2), in which the myology of the tongue of 

 " Fsittacns " ^ was described for the first time. 



The next paper appeared after a considerable interval, and it was only in 1SS6 that 

 Shufeldt, dealing with the osteology of Conurus carolinensis (3), called attention to 

 the peculiar structure of the hyoid bone, and pointed out that " the thyro-hyal 

 elements show but little curvature along their continuities, and still less disposition to 

 curl up behind the cranium." 



In 1891, Gadow (4) described the myology, neurology, and osteology of the Parrot's 



^ The t-wo species of Psittacus described by Nitzsch are species of Chrijgctis and Ara. 



