BIRDS. 331 



sented the flamingoes, and Palaeocircus and Palosortyx, as is indi- 

 cated in their names, the raptorial and gallinaceous birds respec- 

 tively. It is not a little remarkable that Leptosomus, the type of 

 a small family now absolutely restricted to the island of Madagascar, 

 should constitute a part of this fauna. The deposits of the Swabian 

 Alps have yielded a limited number of bird-remains (harrier, cor- 

 morant), and so have those of G-larus, Switzerland, whence was 

 obtained the nearly perfect skeleton of the passerine form known 

 as Protornis or Osteornis. 



The equivalent, or nearly equivalent, deposits of the London 

 Basin, the island of Sheppey, and of Hempstead, in the Isle of 

 Wight, have also yielded a number of avian forms, some of which 

 appear to have been most intimately related to types now living, 

 such as the herons, gulls, and kingfishers (Halcyon or Halcyornisj. 

 But here, as in the Paris Basin, there occur several distinct types 

 whose position among living forms it is very difficult or imjsossible 

 to establish. Such are the Megalornis, a bird somewhat smaller in 

 size than the emu ; Dasornis, which apparently combines true 

 struthious characters with those of the recently exterminated moas 

 of New Zealand; Macrornis, also with struthious characters; and 

 the very singular auatine Odontopteryx toliapicus, recalling in its 

 dental armature the Cretaceous toothed-birds of America. All the 

 older Tertiary bird-remains that have thus far been described 

 from the American continent are from the Western United States, 

 and belong in principal part to the gruiform genus Aletornis (Wy- 

 oming), some of whose species appear to have attained to nearly 

 the stature of the sand-hill crane. A true owl (Bubo leptosteus), 

 about two-thirds as large as the great horned-owl (B. Virginianus), 

 represents the birds of prey, and the passerine PalaBospiza bella the 

 songsters; the former is from Wyoming (Eocene), and the latter 

 from the insect-bearing shales of Florissant, Colorado (Oligocene?). 

 A giant struthious bird, combining some of the characters of the 

 extinct moas, has been described by Professor Cope from the Eocene 

 deposits of New Mexico, as Diatryma gigantea, a form not un- 

 likely generically identical with the European Gastornis. 



Ornithic remains are much more abundant in the Miocene de- 

 posits than in the Eocene, and there is a corresponding further 

 approximation to modern type structures. Prom the lacustrine 

 deposits of Central and Southern France, whence the greatest 



