PAL510LESTES GOREI, n.s. 
AN EXTINCT BIRD. 
By C. W. De VIS, fid. A. 
PI. ii, figs. 4-6. 
While engaged in watching the progress of workmen employed 
in sinking a well at Tandilla, Mr. Glore, the owner of the station, 
and one of the few who are alive to the interest felt by many 
besides themselves in the fossils of the Darling Downs, took unusual 
pains to assure himself that not one present in the beds disturbed 
should escape his notice. His reward could hardly have been greater 
in numerical meagreness. His sole find was a single small bone, 
the subject of the following memorandum. Naturally curious to 
learn what it was that gave him so much trouble to procure, Mr. 
Gore brought it to the Museum for examination, and eventually was 
good enough to leave it there. 
The bone occurred in clay at a depth of 40 feet. It has the 
colour and state of mineralization familiar to handlers of fossil 
exuviae from the Darling Downs ; of its contemporaneity with them 
there is consequently not the shadow of a doubt. 
A glance at its facies is sufficient to assure one that it is a 
phalanx from the foot of a bird. Apart from size and proportions 
there is a pervading similitude amongst the greater number of the 
toe-joints of birds which stamps them individually as avian. But at 
the same time this likeness is apt to render them unsatisfactory 
guides when we wish to ascertain precisely the particular group 
to which any one of them belongs. Nevertheless, an endeavour 
to follow the track of this phalanx may not be altogether to be 
deprecated. The bones of birds are of the rarest, and it is surely 
better to see through a glass darkly than to shut our eyes because 
we cannot see all we would. 
Description. — The phalanx is a stout bone of moderate length 
(18'5 mm.), with a maximum breadth (9*5 mm.) rather more than 
