164 FOSSIL BIRDS. 



and the best characterized of any ornitholite that has ever yet 

 been discovered. It came from Montmartre, and there is 

 a minutely exact representation of it in the " Ossemens 

 Fossiles." 



The head, neck, trunk, pelvis, the two extremities of the 

 right side, and a part of the left wing, are nearly perfect. The 

 form of the head and the beak, which appears to have been 

 tolerably long and strong, are quite distinguishable. There are 

 the remains of a furca, a part of the right coraco'id bone, and 

 a part of the shoulder-blade on the same side. There are 

 the left coracoidian and shoulder-blade, the last of which is 

 almost complete. The humerus, cubitus, and radius on both 

 sides, the thumb, or bone of the bastard wing, the bone of the 

 metacarpus, the first phalanx of the termination of the wing, 

 are all visible. Some of the ribs are so well preserved, that 

 the vertebral and sternal part of the rib are quite distin- 

 guishable, as also is the recurrent apophysis, a part so cha- 

 racteristic of the ribs of birds, that it alone would be sufficient 

 to identify this ornitholite. The pelvis is not less characteristic, 

 from its general form and the direction of the pubis, than 

 from the holes and emarginations observable in it. The femur, 

 tibia, tarsus, three entire toes, and two phalanges of a fourth, 

 constitute the leg of a bird thoroughly well characterized. The 

 neck and the coccyx have left impressions rather more con- 

 fused, in consequence of the more complicated forms of the 

 bones which compose them ; but the whole is most clearly to 

 be recognized by every person who has ever cast his eyes on 

 the skeleton of a bird. 



It would appear that this and the last mentioned ornitholite 

 are precisely of the same species, but the first of the three be- 

 longed to a larger species. 



It remained only (after having thus clearly ascertained the 

 class) to determine the genera to which those different ornitho- 

 lites belonged. But this the Baron confesses to be a problem 

 excessively difficult, if not absolutely impossible, to resolve. 



