Osteology o/Aramus scolopaceus. 53 
the first phalanx of the second digit is distinctly longer than 
that of the third digit. In Balearica and Grus, on the other 
hand^ the first phalanx of the third digit is distinctly the 
longest as well as the broadest. 
In the foregoing pages I have added a few fresh details to 
our knowledge of Aramus, which shew how very closely 
related the genus is to the other Gruidse, and which help to 
forbid its separation as the type of a family or subfamily 
distinct from them. The most important of these further 
likenesses between Aramus and Grus, &c., concern the ver- 
tebrae and the vestiges of an excavation upon the front edge 
of the sternum (see above, fig. 3^ p. 47), which is to be com- 
pared to the deep furrow which in the genus Grus lodges the 
windings of the trachea ; on the contrary, some few of the 
fresh facts recorded in the present communication serve to 
distinguish Aramus from other Cranes. Of these differences 
a large proportion serve at the same time to cement more 
closely a special alliance between Aramus and the at least 
equally aberrant Crane Balearica. Such likenesses as are 
shown by the great breadth of the pelvis in the two genera, 
by the proportions of the segments of the hind limb, by the 
absence of the extension of the squamosal so as to conceal 
the quadrate, and the overlapping of the coracoids at their 
articulation with the sternum, seem to be so far genuine points 
of likeness which bear no obvious relation to adaptation to 
similar needs ; but they appear to^be too few and of insufficient 
importance to afford a base for any claim to very near 
affinity between the two widely separated genera. There are, 
however, a number of other points of resemblance which are 
more striking : these are the loss of even the rudiments of 
the basipterygoid processes, the slightly grooved anterior edge 
of the sternum with its anterior foramen, and the more 
complete fusion of the first to the third dorsal vertebrce ; 
but these features of likeness between Aramus and Balearica 
might be interpreted as simply a parallel advance in each 
case from the structure of the more generalized Cranes of the 
genus Grus. Fiirbringer considers that the genus Aramus, 
