ON THE OSTEOLOGY OF THE TUBINARES. 



II. W. SHUFELDT. 

 I. Historical. 



Few of the groups of Birds have a more interesting literature 

 than this Suborder. 



As early as 1827 M. L'Herminier placed the Tubinares together 

 in a family of birds (28th) and classified them upon the characters 

 of their sterna, assigning them to three sections; (1) the smaller 

 Petrels in which the xiphoidal end of the sternum was entire or 

 nearly so; (2) the Albatrosses, where it presented a shallow notch 

 upon either side of the carina; (3) those Petrels in which two 

 well-marked notches occurred on either side of the sternal keel.^ 



M. M. Hombron and Jacquinot in the year 1844, added some- 

 thing to our knowledge of the Tubinares,^ and they classified the 

 group upon the morphology of their palates, tongues, and beaks. 

 In one genus they placed the three genera Diomedea, Puffinus 

 and Priofinus, in another, the genus Prion, and finally, in their 

 third genus, — Procellaria. By them Pelecanoidt s \va> n inoved 

 from the Procellarida>, and placed in the AK a- near Alle, which 

 they considered its nearest relative (A. n/(/rir(i)i.s]. Viw years 

 later Gray and Mitchell (1849) divide the Procellarida- into the 

 Diomedeinse and the Procellariinc-e, and the last named into 5 

 genera (Prion, Pelecanoides, Thalassidroma, Procellaria, and 

 Puffinus), the group constituting the fourth family of their An.seres.' 

 In his Conspectus, Bonaparte divides the Procellaridre into the 

 Diomedeinse, Procellariina^, and the Halodrominae; the second 



> Recherches sur I'appareil sternal des Oiseaux, pp. 79-81. v. iv. Paris, 

 1827. 



^ Remarques sur quelques points de I'anatomie et de la. physiologic des 

 Procellarides, et essai d'une nouvelle classification des ces oiseaux, Compt. 

 Rend, de I'Acad. Sci. xviii, 1844, pp. 353-358. 



^ The Genera of Birds, iii, pp. 646-650. 



