600 | Transactions.— Geology. 
The following is a list of the bones forwarded by Dr. Finsch, from which 
the bird has been described :— 
2 heads almost complete, with a large portion of the inferior maxillary. 
2 pelves. 
2 clavicles. 
4 shoulder blades. 
4 coracoids. 
2 humerus. 
4 radius and as many ulna. 
_ 4 femurs. 
4 tibias and fibulas. 
4 tarso-metatarsus. 
Several joints of the toes. 
These bones came chiefly from two specimens, and probably from male 
and female. There are some pieces which indicate a third species. 
The head most resembles our Anas clangula in shape as well as in pro- 
portions. In comparing it with a skeleton that we have received from 
Greenland we only find the beak a little wider, the nostrils more elongated, 
the sockets of the eyes not quite so large, and the whole of the skull more 
regularly rounded off. The part about the back of the head is still more 
alike in these two species than in the part round the face. Above the hole 
at the back of the head one sees in both the bone pierced to the right and 
to the left, and the boundary well established by ridges between the back of 
the head and the temples, but these parts are even better distinguished in 
the Anas clangula than in the Anas from New Zealand. 
The two fossil heads show a certain difference, which does not exceed the 
difference that is found between the two sexes, 
The inferior mawillary is moré delicately terminated behind than in the 
living species of our hemisphere. 
The sternum very much resembles that of Anas clangula ; it has the same 
dimensions and the same outline, only the notch is not so high, more faint 
at the back, and shorter in front, so that everything in this bird shows less 
power of flight than in our Anas clangula. 
The differences which are observed in the two New Zealand perpa 
are, no doubt, as in the head, sexual differences. 
The clavicle is considerably larger, stronger, and with the two parts more 
separate than in the Marila Duck. 
The pelvis is in proportion much larger and stronger than in the living 
