CHABACTEES OP RECENT CROCODTLIA. 13 



there is doubtless an approximation to Mecistops ; but Crocodiltis 

 Journei is sharply separated from that genus by the characters 

 of its teeth, and by those of its dermal armour. 



5. Crocodiltts homhifrons (^palustris?) . 



All the species of Crocodilus which I have hitherto mentioned 

 have, in common, the backward curvature of the premaxillo-maxillary 

 suture to the l^vel of the seventh tooth. Eut there is a species of 

 Crocodile, about whose proper specific name I am by no means 

 clear, in which this suture passes straight across the palate, or may 

 even be a little convex forwards. 



And not only do the skulls of this species exhibit this approxi- 

 mation to those of the AlligatoridcB, but they resemble them still 

 further in their rounded snouts, their great width immediately 

 behind the canine groove, and in the fact that, in young speci- 

 mens, one or the other canine may be received into a pit instead 

 of into a groove*. 



In the Hunterian Collection there are seven skulls, varying in 

 length from 6\ inches up to 16 inches, in none of which does the 

 crown of the premaxillo-maxillary suture extend beyond a line 

 joining the sixth pair of teeth. In all there are two short ridges 

 (convergent in young specimens, nearly parallel in old ones) upon 

 the lachrymal bones, which end before reaching the anterior limits 

 of those bones. They all have an oblique ridge on the upper jaw 

 above the tenth tooth ; and the snout attains the width which it 

 has opposite this tooth immediately behind the canine groove. 

 In the British Museum there are five middle-sized skulls with the 

 same characters ; but two of these have a pit on one side of the 

 upper jaw, and a groove on the other, and one has something 

 between a pit and a groove on each side. 



Dr. Gray, has in his ' Catalogue f,' mentioned the peculiar trans- 

 verse disposition of the premaxillo-maxillary suture in his Croco- 



* In a skull of this species 14?^ inches long, in the British Museum, the 

 voma*8 are completely excluded from the palate, and their anterior ends do not 

 extend for an eighth of an inch beyond the palatine part of the palato-maxillary 

 sutxire, which Hes on a level with the anterior margin of the twelfth alveolus. 

 Each vomer is 2f inches long, and presents the same general form as that of 

 Jacare ; only the anterior division is but a very small, flat and thin plate, not a 

 quarter of an inch long. The boundary of the median nares is formed in equal 

 proportions by the vomer and the palatine, and is opposite the fom-teenth tooth. 

 The hinder end of the vomer articulates with the end of the descending pro- 

 cess of the prefrontal. 



t ' Catalogue of the Tortoises, Crocodiles, and Amphisbsenians in the Col- 

 lection of the British Museum,' 1844, p. 59. 



