12 



NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Returning for a moment to the craniofacial joint we find in all 

 of our vultures the sutural traces of the nasal processes of the pre- 

 maxillary persisting through life, the ethmoid being exposed in 

 young birds, but gradually becomes hidden as age advances. In 

 this internasal region the surface is concaved, the depression being 

 shallow and broad in Gymnogyps and Cathartes — deeper and 

 more decided in Catharista and the condor. From this concavity, 

 the upper and convex surface of the nasals, and the rather wide 

 premaxillary, the osseous culmen starts broad and spreading — to 

 rapidly contract again between the capacious nostrils, then suddenly 

 fall, roundly convex to the tip of the beak, after first passing over 

 a rise that occurs with greater or less abruptness just in front of the 

 anterior margins of the peripheries of the nostrils. This is best 

 seen in Sarcorhamphus and less decided in Gymnogyps than any 

 of the others. It is really the upper culminal depression that per- 

 sists down the side of the bill to cause the " swell" at its extremity 

 in the condor and carrion crow. The osseous tomia of the superior 

 mandible are sharp from a point taken below the center of the 

 nostril, forward to the tip of the beak, the line being doubly curved 

 as the beak is so powerfully hooked at its extremity. A row of 

 nutrient foramina are found at a greater or less distance above this 

 margin in all the Cathartidae, with numerous other smaller ones 

 scattered about above them, which exhibit no regularity in their 

 arrangement. Venations caused by the vessels running into them 

 are permanently impressed upon the bone. 



The external osseous narial apertures in these birds are very 

 large, being placed upon the sides of the superior mandible. In 

 form they assume more or less of an oval outline, being long and 

 narrow in Catharista u r u b u , high and broad in the Cali- 

 fornian vulture and the Turkey buzzard. Our figures of the skulls 

 of the Cathartidae in the present treatise will show the forms of 

 these apertures, and give an idea of their shape better than any 

 description can do [see pi. 2, fig. 2, 3; and pi. 6, fig. 9]. 



Beneath, the superior osseous beak is much concaved in all these 

 birds, while the entire rhinal space, above, presents but few ossifica- 

 tions. There is no osseous septum narium at all, anteriorly, and it 

 is only above the maxillopalatines that a narrow, horizontal, bony 

 shelf is seen, that is connected with the roof by a meager, median, 

 bony septum. Mesially, this ossification throws out a process in 

 front (Cathartes a. septentri o n a 1 i s), which curls up 

 in Gymnogyps, and the vertical plate, to which reference has 



