740 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 
created for them, and, if such prove to be the case, to present the re- 
sults of our labor, and so apply it as to settle these birds in the places 
they now occupy upon a still firmer basis, to the end that we may have 
it said that classification has been assisted and furthered. 
Of the skull—tt will be remembered that when we treated of the 
osteology of the North American Tetraonide (Bull. U. 8. Geol. and 
Geogr. Surv. Terr. Vol. VI, No. 2, pp. 311, and Plate V, fig. 51) we 
made a careful dissection of the skull in the young bird before the seg- 
mental anchylosis commenced, and figured and named all the various 
bones that enter into the cranium of the majority of the class. At this 
date, however, the author does not advise the student to implicitly follow 
the nomenclature there given, nor accept all of the deductions set forth. 
We have already informed our reader of the fact that it will be impos- 
sible to carry this interesting part of the subject out in the case-of the 
Oathartide as we do not possess the necessary material. Still, the fig- 
ure above referred to, and the description given for the young of Centro- 
cercus, will no doubt assist us in approximating very closely the bound- 
aries and limits of many of the cranial bones, not that there is the 
slightest relationship among the species of the two families, 4. ¢., the 
Tetraonide and the Cathartide, but that certain rules hold good in each. 
The outward appearances, though, in one case is quite striking, and led 
Dr. Coues to say in his Key: 
‘‘Tn a certain sense, they represent the gallinaceous type of structure ; 
our species of Cathartes, for instance, bear a curious superficial resem- 
blance to a turkey.”,—(Key to N. A. B., pp. 221, ed.. 1872.) 
It is hardly necessary to say here that osteologically the species are 
quite distinct, as Meleagris has its skeleton unmistakabiy stamped with 
all the characteristics of the Gallinw, as Cathartes aura has all those of 
the Vultures, the two being very different. 
In the crania of the Catrartide we find that, after the different species 
have arrived at maturity, a union has taken place among the various seg- 
ments of the so-called vertebral arches that is quite above the average 
result or condition in birds generally, for upon examination we find that 
we have only as free bones the ossa quadrata, the pterygoids, bones of 
the sense capsules (except the ethmo-turbinals), the hyoidal segments of 
the tongue, and the inferior maxilla, all the others having firmly united 
together, very few sutural traces of original separation being left. 
Plates XXIT and XXIV, figures 119 and 127, respectively, give good 
representations of the superior aspects of the skulls of C. awra and C. 
atrata. Many of the peculiarities we discern in these figures are com- 
mon also to the other members of the family. We are struck at once 
with the great breadth of the pseudo-articulation that goes generally 
by the name of the “ fronto-maxilliary.” This is due principally to the 
fact that the nasal bones are unusually broad, in order to encircle the 
great sub-elliptical nostrils of these birds. This articulation, notwith- 
standing its width, is very mobile, and offers several departures from 
the usual mechanism of the system to which it belongs to interest us. 
We find that from the anterior border of the united lacrymal, on either 
side, a niche exists that gives rise to a process, below which process, 
in turn, has its superior border grooved lengthwise and converted into 
an articular surface for a quadrate apophysis thrown out by the outer 
and posterior angle of either nasal. In a position of rest a foramen re- 
mains at the base of this niche in the lacrymal formed by the two bones 
In question, allowing in action or movement the process of the nasal to 
glide into it. (PI. XXII, fig.118.) This is the state of things in C. aura. 
In Pseudogryphus the nasal process is much longer, curved upwards, 
