SHUFELDT. ] OSTEOLOGY OF THE CATHARTIDA. TAL 
and glides over a greater surface on the lacrymal. The quadrate form 
of the nasal process becomes peg-like in atrata, really articulating in a 
socket on the interior aspect of the lacrymal. In the remaining species 
we find this joint more or less persistent, perhaps less so in the South 
American Condor. This mobility produces rather-a confusing condi- 
tion at the pterygo-basi-sphenoidal articulation, for we have observed 
in all of the dry skulls of the Cathartide that the pterapophysial pro- 
cesses of the basi-sphenoid never meet the facets on the pterygoids that 
are evidently intended for their articulation. This seems to be due to 
a warping upwards of the superior mandible during the process of dry- 
ing, drawing both the palatines and with them the pterygoids away 
from these pterapophyses. If we take the pains, however, to dissect 
the head of a recently-killed Vulture, as the author has done, we will 
at once appreciate the normal state of affairs, and find that by the slight- 
est pressure downwards of the upper bill the facets upon the pterygoids 
glide over the pterapophyses. We will find many of the illustrations 
representing them with the interspace between. Ourown plates do so, 
and Professor Huxley has done so before us, as we find about 2 milli- 
meters of space between the pterygoids and the processes frem the 
sphenoid in his view of the base of the cranium in C. aura, although he 
remarks in the text, “‘The basipterygoid processes are large and artic- 
ulate with the pterygoids.” (Class. of B., Proce. Zodl. Soc. Lond., 1867, 
pp. 440, fig. 22.) The reader will remember that in our figure of the 
base of the skull of Speotyto they remain in situ even in the dry condition. 
To return to the fronto-maxillary joint we find in all of our Vultures 
the sutural traces of about the upper third, of the intermawillary, per- 
sisting, with a line between them, indicating to us that the process of 
the bone is bifid, as we found it in the Tetraonide. There are no good 
evidences that the ethmoid has not been completely hid beneath the 
frontals and the other segments that surround the point where it is 
sometimes superticially observed in other birds. In this position we 
find a more or less marked depression occurring in all of the Cathartide, 
caused by prominence of the trontals behind and alike elevation of the 
culmen in front, and the lacrymals and nasals on either side. This de- 
pression is shallow and broad in Pseudogryphus and Cathartes ; deeper and 
more decided in Sarcorhamphus and Catharista, where a slight median 
elevation in the latter, better shown in G. papa than any, gives it the 
appearance of being double. From this point the upper and convex 
surface of the nasals, and the wide intermaxillary, cause the osseous 
culmen to start broad and spreading—to rapidly contract again between 
the capacious nostrils, then suddenly fall roundly convex to tke tip of 
the beak, after first passing over a rise that occurs with greater or less 
abruptness just in front of the anterior margins of the peripheries of 
the nasal apertures. This is best seen in Sarcorhamphus, and less de- 
cided in Pseudogryphus than any of the others. It is really the upper 
culmenal depression that persists down the sides of the bill to cause the 
“swell” at its extremity in the Condor and Carrion Crow. (Fig. 118, 
Pl. XX.) The osseous tomia of the superior maxillary are sharp from 
a point taken below the center of the nostril, until they terminate at the 
point of the beak. This much of this margin at first presents a long 
convexity, then a corresponding concavity, to drop suddenly to the tip 
of the bill where the two meet anteriorly. A row of nutrient foramina 
are found at a greater or less distance above this margin in all the 
Cathartide, with numerous other smaller ones scattered about above 
them, without any apparent attempt at order or regularity. Venations 
caused by the vessels running into them are permanently impressed 
