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ossified rings of a bird’s trachea, about half an inch in diameter (Pl. XCII. fig. 7) ; 
several bones, including jaws and teeth, of a large Seal of the genus Arctocephalus ; and 
a few bones of a small Dog, besides the calcined bones already alluded to, which include 
some that have indubitably appertained to a human skeleton. But there is no evidence 
that the human or canine remains were imbedded, like the bones of the birds and seals, 
in the deposit of the volcanic sand. 
From this extremely rich and interesting addition to the materials for working out the 
zoological history, past and present, of the distant isles of New Zealand, I select for 
the subject of the present Memoir the bones of the head and beak of a bird which I am 
induced, provisionally, to refer to the same genus and species as the limb-bone of 
Aptornis otidiformis. 
The largest and most complete specimen (Pl. XLIII. figs. 1, 2, 3) has a broad, 
depressed, subelongate beak, regularly but moderately curved downwards, resembling a 
cooper’s ‘ adze’ (doloire, Fr.), with evidence in the skull of unusual muscular forces for 
working such beak. A second skull (Pl. XLVIL.), of nearly equal size, with a beak more 
resembling that of the Emeu, and with characters of the skull which deviate less than 
those in Dinornis from the cranial organization of the Apéterya, I refer to the genus 
Palapteryx, indicated in the preceding Memoir by certain characters in the bones of the 
legs approaching those of Apteryx. There is a portion of the lower jaw (Pl. XLIV. 
figs. 1, 2) which from its size may have belonged to the Palapteryx ingens, if not to the 
Dimornis giganteus. 
The cranial portion of the skull of Aptornis otidiformis is intermediate in size between 
that figured in Pl. XVI, figs. 1-4, and that in P], XXXI. figs. 4, 5 & 6, of a preceding 
Memoir, p. 116; and if the reference of the larger of those crania to Dinornis 
struthoides, and of the smaller one to Dinornis dromioides be correct, the present skull 
indicates that the genus and species of bird to which it is here referred differed from both 
Dinornis and Palapteryx in the greater relative size of the head to the body and legs of 
the extinct bird. 
The cranium of <dptornis in its genera] broad and depressed form, in the pedun- 
culate condyle, in the vertical plane of the foramen magnum (fig. 4, 0), in the direction 
from below upwards and forwards of the broad and low occipital surface (fig. 1, 3), in 
the slight convexity of the parietal region (fig. 2, 7), and in the wide and deep temporal 
fossie (fig. 1, t, 8", 12), approaches the characters exhibited by the previously described 
specimens of the cranium of Dinornis (pp. 116-120, Pls. XVI. & XXXI,). But some 
of these cranial peculiarities of the great extinct wingless birds are exaggerated in the 
present genus, especially the downward development and abrupt descent of the basi- 
occipital and basisphenoid (fig. 4, 5) and the forward inclination of the occipital surface, 
which makes the occipital condyle (figs. 4 & 6, 1) the centre of the hinder surface of the 
skull, and places the occipital foramen (0) in the upper half—characters hitherto 
unknown in the air-breathing Vertebrata, amongst which the Crocodilia, perhaps, 


