XXVI.—Description of the Remains of a Bird, Tortoise, and Lizard from the Chalk of Kent.

Abstract

Plate XXXIX. Description of the Remains of a Bird from the Chalk, Pl. XXXIX. fig. 1 and 2. The three portions of fossil bone to be first noticed in this paper were obtained by the Earl of Enniskillen from the chalk near Maidstone, and were recognised by his Lordship and Dr. Buckland to belong to a species of bird. The largest portion is the shaft of a long bone, fig. 1, and is nine inches in length, with one extremity mutilated, but nearly entire, and the other broken off. The extremity is expanded; the rest of the shaft of the bone preserves a pretty regular and uniform size, and is slightly bent. It is unequally three-sided, with the sides flat and the angles rounded off, fig. 1 a , and measures two inches and a half in circumference. It differs from the femur of any known bird in the proportion of its length as compared with its breadth, and from the tibia or metatarsal bone in its trihedral figure and the flatness of the sides, none of which are longitudinally grooved. It resembles most the humerus of the Albatross, both in its form, proportions, and size, but differs therefrom in the more marked angles which bound the three sides. The expanded extremity likewise resembles the distal end of the humerus of the Albatross, but is too much mutilated to allow of the exact amount of similarity to be determined. On the supposition that this fragment of bone is the shaft of