No. 433.] CERTAIN GROUPS OF BIRDS. 



55 



described and named by Isidore Geoffroy-St. Hilaire in 1S51, 

 who named this new ally of the ostrich sEpyomis maxim us. 

 This was confirmed later by M. M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards 

 and Grandidier (Ann. Sci. Nat., Ser. 5, Vol. XII, pp. 167-196, 

 Pis. VI-XVI), and now the opinion is quite universally enter- 

 tained among ornithotomists that these birds were ostriches 

 related to the genus Struthio of the African continent or the 

 adjacent mainland. It has been shown, however, that the 

 largest species of yEpyornis thus far discovered, as indicated 

 by its fossil remains, was by no means as big or as tall a bird 

 as the larger species of the Dinornithidae of New Zealand. 



The fossil remains in the hands of science of these Madagascan 

 ostriches are by no means abundant, consisting principally of 

 bones of the trunk skeleton and of the lower extremity. Max 

 Fiirbringer 1 has discussed the value of these very fully as well 

 as the work upon them by Edwards and Grandidier. It is 

 not considered necessary in this brief article to redescribe 

 these fragmentary remains, and there can be no question 

 but what the birds they represent were a group of ostriches 

 quite as distinct as the present existing ostriches of Africa 

 (Struthio). 



This concludes my brief survey of the osteological characters 

 of the fossil and existing forms of the true ostrich birds. 

 Before concluding the present article, however, I should like 

 to call attention to a well-known fact, that it is very generally 

 believed that Apteryx is closely allied to the Dromasognathae, 

 and should be grouped with them. Many claim that the 

 family Apterygidas, to which it belongs, is in the same suborder 

 with the Dinornithidae, but the more attention I pay to the 

 phylogeny of birds the less and less do I see the glaring evi- 

 dences of the struthionine affinities of these birds. 



It would seem that other naturalists besides myself have, or 

 do, entertain similar doubts upon this point. Dr. Sharpe in 

 his admirable work A Review of Recent Attempts to classify 

 Birds, in giving his ideal plan of an arrangement of birds in a 

 museum in order to exhibit their relationships, says on page 59, 



1 Untersuchungen zur Morphologic und SysUmatik der Vogel. II, Allgemeiner 

 Theil, pp. 1 463-1 465. 



