1898.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 499 



and they do not possess those vestiges of lacertilian morphology in 

 the bases of their crania that were formerly supposed to exist there. 

 The double vomers that a few years ago were attributed to them, 

 are now generally conceded to be nothing more than mesial edges 

 of the imperfectly ossified palatines, as was pointed out by Garrod 

 in 1872. In that year Garrod printed a brief paper in the Ibis, in 

 which he claimed that Gecinus viridis and its allies possessed 

 a median vomer, though it was differently formed from the bone as 

 it occurs among some of the Passerine birds. Nevertheless Dr. 

 Sharpe as late as 1891, in his extremely useful brochure, Recent 

 Attempts to Classify Birds, still claims saurognathism for the Pici, 

 although in the same paragraph he admits that in this entire sub- 

 order the " vomer is slender, pointed and split " (p. 84). It is not 

 difficult to believe that all of the alleged saurognathous characters 

 in the skull and associated bony arches of the woodpeckers are due 

 to changes wrought in time through the special habits of this 

 particular group of birds, rather than that they stand in evidence 

 as structural remnants inherited from their ancient reptilian ances- 

 tors. 



