﻿264 SHUFELDT. 



neck and back are always pneumatic. Sarcops has a very rudimentary 

 pair of tree ribs on its thirteenth cervical vertebra, and a much longer 

 free pair on the fourteenth ; these latter, however, never have costal ribs 

 or unciform appendages. 



There are then 37 vertebra? and the pygostyle in the spinal column 

 of Sarcops; the five dorsal ones bearing the dorsal ribs possess, as do 

 all the others of the chain, the usual passerine characters. These ribs 

 all support well-developed unciform appendages, and connect with the 

 sternum by the intervention of a graduated series of costal ribs. The 

 leading vertebra of the pelvis also has a pair of long, slender, free ribs, 

 but this pair lacks the epipleural appendages, and its costal haemapophyses, 

 although long, fail to connect with the sternum. In the dorsal vertebrae 

 the neural spines mutually interlock with each other, in front and behind, 

 along their superior borders, while the anterior and posterior margins 

 of these spines are concave and so do not come in contact with each 

 other. The atlas vertebra has its articular cup perforated at its base, 

 and the odontoid process of the axis vertebra is conspicuous. We note 

 that in the case of the first six caudal vertebrae the transverse processes 

 are very nearly of a uniform length, with pointed outer extremities. 

 They are bent slightly downward, and their neural spines are about 

 equally well developed. Only the fifth, sixth, and seventh caudals have 

 haemal spines, they being bifurcated in the last two — single, and hooked 

 forward in the first. The seventh caudal vertebra is more or less rudi- 

 mentary, more especially in regard to its lateral processes rather than its 

 spines, in fact its bifurcated haemal spine is the largest of the series. 



Sarcops has a typically passerine sternum, and scarcely departs at all 

 in its characters from the sterna of other birds more or less nearly related 

 to it. Oriolus cliinensis, for example, has a sternum almost identically 

 like the bone as we find it in Sarcops; moreover, the sterna agree in 

 the adult in the matter of length, to the fraction of a millimeter, the 

 measurements being taken from the base of the bifurcation of the manu- 

 brium in front to the middle point of the xiphoidal border behind. The 

 manubrial process is somewhat larger in Sarcops than it is in 0. chinensis, 

 otherwise they are identical and the sternum of Sarcops is so thoroughly 

 passerine that it requires no special description. Lamprocorax forms 

 no exception to this statement. As we know, even in the crows (Pica, 

 Corvus, etc.) the sternum is practically the same in character — here, 

 however, we meet with the pneumatic foramen mesially, in the coracoidal 

 groove, posterior to the base of the manubrium, not found in Sarcops 

 and others, wherein, nevertheless, the sternum is pneumatic. 



Passing to the pelvis it is very obvious at a glance that in all partic- 

 rdars it, too, is t3 r pically passerine in each and all of its characteristics; 

 so that what has just been said above in reference to the sternum is 

 equally applicable to the pelvis. If we compare character with character 

 as found in the pelvis of Sarcops with the corresponding ones in the 



