FOSSIL BIRDS AT VERO. 
41 
the United States National Museum. The shaft in the fossil bone 
is but very slightly stouter, which may be due to individual variation 
or difference in sex. It is quite possible that the fossil bone be¬ 
longed to the Egret just named, and certainly to a very closely allied 
species in the event that it did not. O11 the back of this specimen 
number 19 is found, in ink. 
Number 6931,19—. For some reason this specimen is num¬ 
bered exactly like the last, though it apparently has no relation to it, 
beyond, perhaps, having been discovered in the same place and at the 
same time. It consists of anterior moiety of the left scapula of an 
adult bird of some considerable size. Upon comparison it seems to 
very closely approach the corresponding bone, or that part of it, 
in the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura septentrionalis ), and pos¬ 
sibly may have belonged to that species. 
Number 6773, 46. This is a right scapula, with the distal part 
broken off and lost. Like the two foregoing, it is thoroughly fos¬ 
silized, and of a chocolate color, of a shade agreeing with the. tarso- 
metarsus described above. The individual was adult; the anterior 
extremity is somewhat abraded. It differs in not a few particulars 
from the last, though it came from a bird about the same size as a 
Turkey Buzzard. It is highly pneumatic, and a row of such fora¬ 
mina are to be seen in a deep transverse groove, seen upon its dorsal 
aspect, just within the anterior articular head of the bone. All three 
of these specimens should be held till more material is discovered, of 
a kind that will throw further light upon them, before final refer¬ 
ences are made. 
