326 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



pneumatic foramen. The distal part of the ulnar crest is continued 

 slightly past the pneumatic fossa, as the more or less sharpened 

 ridge upon this aspect of the bone. The radial crest is low, rather 

 long, and bent well palmad. Where it terminates proximally, 

 we find a circumscribed subcircular concavity, present in all ordinary 

 wild geese, that represents the tuberculum externum. Upon the 

 whole, the expanded proximal end of the bone is broad from above, 

 downward, and its extreme part is somewhat bent in the anconal 

 direction. 



At its distal end, the ulnar and radial tubercles are well developed, 

 and the ectepicondylar process practically absent, while the entepi- 

 condylar one is pretty well developed. There is a decided fossa 

 upon the anconal aspect of the bone immediately above the ulnar 

 tubercle, and upon the other side of this end of the bone further 

 above the tubercles, there is another, the latter being intended for 

 muscular insertion. 



All these characters are essentially repeated in the smaller hu- 

 merus of Dendrocygna autumnalis, though here, al- 

 though we find the pneumatic fossa relatively quite as large as it 

 is in the geese, the pneumatic foramen* is reduced to a mere pin 

 hole. As in many ducks and geese, there is to be seen upon the 

 entepicondylar process a sharply defined little concavity, divided in 

 two by a fine bony ridge; another just like it occurs in the corres- 

 ponding locality upon the radial side of the bone. These two pit- 

 lets are, to some extent, distinctive of anserine fowl, and I have 

 found them useful in identifying the humeri of fossil birds belong- 

 ing to that group, using the character with advantage in connection 

 with others. 



In the geese and in the tree ducks (Dendrocygna) the bones of 

 the antibrachium and manus are completely nonpneumatic, and they 

 present, in the main, the characters of the ducks, already described 

 above. In Branta, and as a rule, the ulna is longer than the radius, 

 and possesses about three times the bulk of shaft. Both are some- 

 what bowed, the ulna being more so than the radius, and its shaft 

 faintly shows a double row of papillae, to which, in life, are attached 

 the quill butts of the secondary feathers. The olecranon process is 

 pretty well marked at the proximal extremity of the ulna, but other- 

 wise these bones are not peculiar, and present the usual ornithic 

 characters. In Anser albifrons and Chen h. nivalis 

 we find these same characters, but it may be as well to note that 

 the long bones of the antibrachium in the latter goose are at least 



