396

366

in a more perfect state than were some of those bones - as, e.g., the sternum and pelvis
therein described and represented. The most instructive additional bones of this second
series were an almost entire skull and a humerus, the latter showing that the bone
referred to Cnemiornis in the description of Pl. LXIX. (p. 247) must have belonged
to some other, apparently similar-sized, flightless bird, which I deem to have been
probably an Aptornis, inasmuch as a few bones referable to that genus were included in
the collection sent to me in 1864 from Timaru. For this instructive accession to the
evidences of Cnemiornis (pp. 239-245) ornithology is indebted to the Hon. Captain
Fraser, F.R.G.S., who has consigned an account of the cave in which the bones were
discovered to the 'Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' vol. v. (1872) 1.

The 'Notes' by Dr. Hector on these remains, now in the Museum of the Wellington
Philosophical Society, have been published in the 'Proceedings of the Zoological
Society of London,' Part I. 1874.

Having since had the opportunity of examining portions of two crania, certain ribs,
humeri, and a metacarpus of other individuals of Cnemiornis, I can testify to the accuracy
of the figures of those bones given by Dr. Hector and to his 'Notes' my later acqui-
sitions enable me to add descriptions and figures of an ulna and an almost entire coracoid
of Cnemiornis. The more perfect of my two skulls includes also the roof and fore
(lacrymal) part of the orbits, wanting in Dr Hector's figure : and I believe, therefore,
that a description of these specimens confirming Dr. Hector's demonstration of the
former existence of a very large, not to say gigantic, Anserine bird in New Zealand
will not be unacceptable, inasmuch as in their description comparisons will be made
with the skulls of other Lamellirostrals, more especially of the flightless Duck (Tachy-
eres 2 brachypterus, Latham) of Magellan's Strait, and of the Cereopsis cinereus of
Australia. The latter bird is notable among Anserines for the length of its legs and
shortness of its bill ; and it appears to me more terrestrial in its habits than most of its
living congeners.

Skull.

The occipital surface of the skull of Cnemiornis is remarkable, in the present com-
parative series, for its breadth, especially at its base, here due to the outward expansion
of the paroccipitals (Pl. CI. fig. 2, 4, 4), in which feature the skull of Tachyeres is

1 'A description of the Earnsclough Moa-Cave,' p. 102. ( This cave is in the interior of the province of
Otago.)
2 The generic name Micropterus, applied by Lesson in 1831 to the Anas brachyptera of Latham, was bespoken
by Lacepede, in 1802, for a genus of Fishes. Microptera was applied by Gravenhorst, in the same year, to a
family of pentamerous Coleoptera, and by Robin in 1830, to a genus of Diptera. Micropteryx was given by
Hubner, in 1816, to a genus of Lepidoptera, and by Agissiz, in 1829, to a genus of Fishes. The name above
proposed for a subgeneric type of Anatidae, as well-marked as any of those to which terms indicative of such
distinction have been applied, is derived from ********, swift rower, and related to the characteristic move-
ments of Latham's species in water, which has obtained for it, from navigators, the name of "Steamer Duck."