546 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
Dr. Elliott Coues adds some highly important observations on 
the osteology of the family, and compares their more prominent ; 
skeletal modifications with those of the other groups of the Pygop- _ 
odes. Any one of a large number of individual bones, he asserts, ; 
is of itself characteristic of the family. ‘‘ A remarkable breadth — 
and flatness of different bones,” he observes, ‘is the dominant — 
characteristic ; it marks several bones that are cylindrical in all _ 
other birds and hollow in most ;” and adds that “ foremost among — 
, the diagnostic skeletal characters of the family comes the partly 
confluent condition of the metatarsals, which in all other exist- 
ing birds are completely fused.” The compound metatarsus — 
“ shows its composition in the two lengthened fenestre that indi 
cate the three original metatarsals ;” and Dr. Coues suggests that | 
“this may afford a useful hint in any search for the ancestral stock 
or primitive type of the Spheniscide ;” yet one of these fenestre 
is apparently common to many of the lower water birds; while — 
the primitive distinctness of these bones is indicated by the med- ; 
ullary canals that are readily seen in a transverse section of the — 
distal extremity of the metatarsals. ; z 
This carefully prepared paper, by Prof. Hyatt and Dr. Coues, 1$ 
lina, by Dr. Elliott Coues, based on two y 
locality. The groups thus. far fully reported upon are Pe o 
mals, Birds and Reptiles among Vertebrates, the Crus 15 
Radiata, and Mollusca, and also the Brachiopoda of the por 
The lists refer almost exclusively to the small island 0n ; 
Fort Macon is situated, and to the waters immediately § i Ed 
ing it, thus rendering the paper, by its restriction to a SMa 
nal features, including about four pages res 
(Didelphys Virginiana). A wide range of in in connection 
color, size and proportions of parts is pointed out, or 
* _N. C., and Vicinity: = 
Notes on the Natural History of Fort Macon, , a July, 187 
Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1871, pp. 12-49, 120-148, May an 
