302 
(Pls. XI. & XIV. d), biventer capitis (Pl. XII. 0**), complexus (Pls. XI. & XIII. y), 
and trachelo-mastoideus (Pl. XIII. fig. 1, z). The developments of cranial bone for the 
insertions of the corresponding muscles in Aptornis indicate a fourfold increase of force 
and size, and bespeak corresponding power with which the beak was driven through 
the surface and the soil displaced. For this application it was requisite that the lower 
jaw should be held firmly in contact with the upper one, that both might penetrate as 
one instrument with a common sharp-edged extremity; hence the evidence of unusual 
extensions from the main cranial diapophyses of the bony processes giving origins to 
the muscles working the cranial rib, 7. e. drawing up the mandible and holding it in 
close contact with the maxilla, as in that action of the corresponding muscles of the 
strong man who in a determined and vigorous effort sets his teeth. 
Underlying all these exaggerations of apophysial outstandings, we nevertheless dis- 
cern a “porphyrian platform’—so much more essential resemblance to the cranial 
characteristics of the Coots, especially the larger kinds, whose craniology is illustrated 
in Plate XLVII. as to conclude Aptornis to have been (if one may not speak of it as 
present in the living creation) a gigantic modified “‘ Ralline.” The down-bending of the 
mandible, it is true, is not seen in Notornis or Porphyrio; but in the “ Poule rouge au 
bec de Bécasse” of the Mascarene Islands (for a knowledge of which we are indebted to 
Von Frauenfeld’s publication of the coloured drawing, from the life, preserved in the 
library of the Emperor Francis 1.) one sees a curve of beak like that of Aptornis. The 
mandible of this probably extinct Mauritian bird, which has been obtained, with bones 
of the Dodo, from the famous * Mare aux Songes,” shows also, in the figures given by 
M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards', the deflected angle answering to 30 in Porphyrio (fig. 1. 
Pl. XLVII.) and Notornis (ib. fig. 7), also the small “ prearticular foramen” (ib, ib. 
figs, 1 & 7,10). The larger yacuity (ib. ib. w) is almost reduced to the state of obso- 
lescence which characterizes the more consolidated and more powerful mandible of 
Aptornis (comp. fig. 4 with the mandible in fig. 1, Pl. LXXXIII.). The extent of 
symphysis, with its canaliculate upper surface, is interestingly similar in Aphanapteryx 
(Pl. LXXXIV. fig. 5) and Aptornis (ib. fig. 6), and I concur in the conclusions to which 
M. A, Milne-Edwards has been led as to the “analogies of Aphanapteryx with the 
Rails”*. In speculating on the origin of the much larger extinct(?) brevipennate 
Rallines of New Zealand, it may be remembered that our own Coots and Waterhens 
are poor fliers compared with most water-birds, 
' “ Researches into the Zoological Affinities of Aphanaptery2,” in ‘The Ibis’ for July 1869, 
* This, 1869, p. 267. By a vurious coincidence, at a later period of the year (1848) in which I proposed a 
diminutive of “ Apterygiornis” for the large extinct Coot of New Zealand, the accomplished Belgian orni- 
thologist, M. de Selys-Longchamps, was moved to propound a minor diminutive of the same term for some 
loosely indicated Mascarene birds, one of which we now know to have been an extinct Coot of the Mauritius. 
Without entering into the question of the degree of synonymy of Aptornis and Apterornis, the priority of pro- 
position of the first will, [ apprehend, secure it for the main subject of my present Memoir. 
