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Show 18 PROF, D'ARCY W. THOMPSON ON T H E [Jan. 17, is continuous and not divided into two. The pterygoid condyle is well-marked, and more distinctly separate than usual from the long mandibular condyle. The chief peculiarity in the bone is in the region of the quadrato-jugal cup, which is more than usually elevated from the flat surface of the bone, the tubercular masson which it stands being produced above into a sharp ridge, and being directed outwards or even a little backwards instead of forwards, as is commonly the case. The whole under surface of this protuberance, together with the outer face of the body of the bone down to the condyle, plays on a corresponding articular surface on the inner wall and edge of the mandible. In one of m y specimens of Nestor the jugal sends up a short but distinct rudiment of an " ascending ramus." There are many other points of more or less importance, but many of which I must pass over, to be noted in the skull of Nestor. The nasal apertures are oval and very large, and are hollowed out in front into a broad shallow depression. On the base of the cranium the ridges which run their divergent course from below the median Eustachian orifice to the paroccipital process are very high, whereas in Psittacus they are feeble, and the well-marked surface or area external to them is much more flat and approximately horizontal in the latter bird. The angle of the mandille is pointed and very elongate, and the foramen, or rather fontanelle, in the middle of the mandibular ramus is oval and very large. Family STRINGOPID^E. The skull of Stringops (figs. 8, 9) is very remarkable, only less so on the whole, and more so in some respects, than that of Nestor. Stringops habroptilus. (Letters as in previous figures.) The orbit is complete (in the adult) by union of the prefrontal with the postfrontal ; in other words, the orbit of Stringops is unlike that of any other Old-World Parrot, and resembles that of |
