1891.) ~ Geology and Paleontology. 361 
owner and deposited in his cabinets, he, in various scientific publications, 
described a number of them. They were the following species, viz. : 
Two forms of Podiceps, P. occidentalis and P. californicus, the first- 
named Professor Cope believing to be identical with the now-existing 
chmophorus occidentalis of that region, a species referred to above ; 
Podilymbus podiceps, Graculus macropus s. n., Anser hypsibatus s. n., 
canadensis, albifrons gambeli, and another species near Anser nigricans ; 
also a swan, which he named Cygnus paloregonus, and finally the 
fossil remains of Fulica americana. There were many other species 
still remaining, and a few years afterwards—that is, early in the present 
year—Professor Cope did me the honor to pass all this material into 
my hands for full description and illustration. Coming, as it does, just 
as I am about to undertake that volume of my ‘“‘ Osteology of the 
Birds of the United States”? which has to deal with the water birds, 
now in course of preparation, this material is especially welcome to me, 
as the fossil forms can be conveniently compared with the existing 
species of birds which I shall describe in that work. 
This beautiful collection of fossils consists of some fifteen hundred 
or more specimens of bones, many of which are perfect, many of 
which can be restored, and many fragmentary pieces.? They are all 
perfectly clean, the vast majority of them being of a deep leaden hue, 
almost black in some instances, and exhibit their characters admirably. 
My preliminary examination of this material leads me to believe that 
there are still over twenty species of fossil birds represented by it 
which still remain to be described. This is interesting in view of the 
fact that up to the present time there have been less than fifty fossil 
birds of the United States described by naturalists. As we all know, 
they constitute the rarest of all vertebrate fossil remains. So far as the 
birds are concerned, when the chapter is written and printed on the 
Equus beds of Fossil Lake, of later Tertiary times, it may prove that 
some of those forms still exist ; others are undoubtedly extinct ; while 
the general character of the whole agrees with forms that go to make 
up the existing avifauna of that region. t a close study of the de- 
partures therefrom is of the highest importance, and it is rendered the 
more interesting from the fact that we can compare it with the mam- 
malian, reptilian, and icthyian faunæ of the same horizon. I find that _ 
some of these bones must have belonged to rather remarkable types of 
birds, and different from anything now in existence. They were all 
found either on or in the loose, friable deposit, the sedimentary 
_? The writer here exhibited some fine selected specimens from the collection, and sub- 
SOCICLY P 
