882 Recent Literature. [ December, 
this city to raise a fund to secure these repairs, will be successful. 
Then it will be seen whether the Board of Directors will rise to 
the importance of the work cut out, by the Council of Education, 
and will really grant to that body the privilege of carrying out 
the programme they have presented. Unless this is fully and 
frankly done, the Board of Directors may rest assured that their 
labors, which have been neither few nor light, will have been 
wasted, and that the Exposition will be a failure. The Council 
of Education is composed of capable men, and such as will not 
be found to repeat their past work unless their relations to the 
Exposition are placed on a permanent and satisfactory basis. 
:0:—-—— 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
‘Tue Tarsus anp Carpus oF Birps.—In his first paper, Prof. 
Morse gives the results of his examination of the embryos of 
various North American birds, with reference to the primitive 
constitution of their tarsus and carpus. In the former he finds 
three bones, “#diale, fibulare and centrale. The first two unite into 
an hourglass-shaped bone such as exists among Dinosauria, the 
astragalo-calcaneum, while the last forms the cap for the metatar- 
sals, contributing to the adult tarsometatarse. In the carpus 
Prof. Morse finds four bones (rarely five), of which two become 
united with the ulno-radius, and two or three with the metacar- 
als. He then introduces the description of a fourth tarsal bone 
found by Prof. Wyman in the “blue heron,” and mentioned by 
‘him in a letter. Prof. Morse concludes that this element is the 
intermedium of Gegenbaur somewhat out of place. In his quarto 
memoir, the author further investigates this fourth tarsal and its 
homologues. His studies having been directed to the lower 
birds, as penguins, auks, petrels, etc., he finds the ascending bone 
partly occupying the position of the intermedium in several of 
aem. He finds that it early unites with the tibiale and fibulare, 
_ forming a temporary astragalo-calcaneum, which thereafter unites 
with the tibia. He is-thus able to homologize the ascending pro- 
cess of the astragalo-calcaneum of Ornithotarsus and Lelaps with 
ie the intermedium. In the course of his examinations of the 
is of the sea pigeon, Prof. Morse found curious apical expan- 
sions of the distal phalanges. > = oo 
_ We have been much interested in this essay, and commend 
it as a good illustration of the meaning of the term monograph. 
_1 The Tarsus and Carpus of Birds. By E:S. Morse, Ph.D. Annals Lyceum 
The Identity of the Ascending Process of the Astragalus in Birds with the Inter- 
on medium. By E. S. MORSE, Ph.D. Anniv. Mem: Boston Sve. N. History. 1880. 4t- 
