OCR Text |
Show 454 PROF. HUXLEY ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. [Apr. 11, Nyctibius jamaicensis. View of the palate without the pterygoid bones. The letters as before. longer and narrower than in the Swifts or the typical Passerine birds. The expanded inner ends of the slender and characteristically Passerine maxillo-palatines are quite distinct from the vomer and from one another. Caprimulgus further presents a remarkable contrast to the Swifts and all the true Passeres in having well-developed basipterygoid processes. These are absent in AZgotheles novee-hollandice, the palate of which is intermediate between that of the Goatsuckers and that of the Swifts. Nyctibius closely resembles Caprimulgus, even to possessing the very peculiar division of each ramus of the mandible into two portions, the one of which is moveable upon the other, pointed out in the latter genus by Nitzsch. But the slender anterior processes of the palatines are closely approximated in the middle line, instead of remaining widely separated as in Caprimulgus and Trochilus; and the maxillo-palatines are closely adherent to them and to the vomer, though a true anchylosis does not appear to have taken place. Trochilus has the true Passerine vomer, with its broad and truncated anterior, and deeply cleft posterior end. I have not yet been able to obtain a perfectly satisfactory view of the structure and arrangement of the palatine bones in the Humming Birds. That the birds of which I have spoken under the four heads of Dromceognathous, Schizognathous, Desmognathous, and A^githogna-thous really possess the various arrangements of the palatine and adjacent bones which I have described, is a matter of observation which readily admits of confirmation or the reverse. It is another and very important question whether these cranial characters may safely be taken as indications of natural affinities; and I now propose to make a few remarks on that point. It will not, I think, be disputed by any ornithologist that the Schizognathous birds constitute a very'natural assemblage. Taking |