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Show 162 THE SECRETARY ON ADDITIONS TO THE MENAGERIE. [Mar. 6, ordinary short and otherwise weak pelvic limb-bones as compared with the very lengthy pectoral ones, and the size of the rest of the bird, it stands quite unique in the suborder to which it belongs. More remarkable than all, however, are the many characters in its skull that powerfully recall the Albatrosses among the Tubinares. These are so evident that one is almost led to believe, if it be not actually the case, that the strong hooked beak in the skull of Fregata is a Diomedean rather than a Pele-canine character1. Apart from the free ends of the furcula coalescing with the coracoids, there are characters in the sternum and shoulder-girdle of Fregata that also recall the forms of the corresponding bones in the Albatrosses, but beyond this there appears to be nothing else in the skeleton of the Man-o'-War Bird at all reminding us of those birds. Since this relationship exists between Fregata and Diomedea, remote as it may be, it nevertheless, taken in connection with what has been pointed out above in regard to Phaethon and Puffinus, ought to convince us that the Steganopodes are more closely connected with the Tubinares than they are with the Longipennes. There are those who claim to see a kinship existing between the Accipitres and the Fregatoidea, but there are surely no indications of it so far as the osteology of any of the representatives of the two suborders in question is concerned. March 6, 1894. Dr. A. GUNTHER, F.B.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. Tbe Secretary read the following report on the additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of February 1894:- The total number of registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of February was 83, of which 66 were by 1 In my extended account of the osteology of the Steganopodes, referred to above, a full description of the skull of the Man-o'-War Bird is given, illustrated by several figures from photographs. From that account I select some of the statements:-"For example, both superficially and otherwise the skull of Fregata resembles the skull in some species of Albatrosses (Biomedeidce) in not a few respects. This not only applies to the lower jaw, where the similarity is very evident, but also to a number of characters in the cranium and face. The long powerfully hooked superior mandibles are a good deal alike, as are the maxillo-palatines. Fregata has a vomer that approaches that bone in the Albatrosses ; its palatines are not far off, and even still less so its pterygoids and quadrates. The lacrymals are upon the same plan of structure, and the entire cranium proper in the Man-o'-War Bird might well answer for that of an Albatross but slightly removed from the typical stock. Fregata, however, lacks the deep supraorbital glandular fossaa so characteristic of the Biomedeidce, and, from above downwards, the skull is somewhat more compressed than it is in, for example, such a species as the Short-tailed Albatross (B. albatrus)." [Then follows a detailed comparison, character by character, of the skull and associate parts as found in Fregata aquila and Biomedea albatrus, but that comparison is of too great length to insert here as a footnote.] |