proceedings: biological society 581 



Regular Program 



R. W. Shufeldt: Observations on the cervical region of the spine in 

 chelonians . 



A series of lantern slides was shown which presented photographs 

 of the cervical vertebrae of an adult specimen of Amyda cartilaginea 

 from Japan ; a photograph of a drawing by Dr. Shufeldt showing the 

 lateral view of the skull of Amyda Jerox and different views of its leading 

 cervicals ; and, finally, sagittal sections of the neck of the young Amyda 

 Jerox, showing the leading vertebrae of the cervical region in that 

 chelonian. These sections were furnished by Dr. C. Judson Herrick, 

 Director of the Hull Laboratory of Anatomy of Chicago University, 

 and were made expressly for Dr. Shufeldt's demonstrations from ma- 

 terial supplied by him. Various authorities were cited, as Giinther, 

 Claus, Sir Richard Owen, Hay, Boulenger, Raynolds, and others, who 

 in their writings contended that chelonians generally possessed but 

 eight cervical vertebrae in the neck, and that the bone found in this 

 region of the spine, between the atlas and third vertebrae, was not a 

 vertebra but an independent bone, which they designated as the 

 "odontoid bone." Dr. Shufeldt, in partial agreement with Professor 

 Huxley, contended that this so-called "odontoid bone," inasmuch as 

 it possessed an odontoid process in Amyda jerox, and was developed 

 in the notochord, as in the case of the axis vertebra in other vertebrata, 

 was, in fact, the second vertebra of the neck in chelonians, notwith- 

 standing the fact that, for some reason or other, its processes had, in 

 time, disappeared. It had not, however, lost its usual articulations 

 with the atlas and the third cervical vertebrae. This point having 

 been demonstrated, it gave chelonians nine cervical vertebrae instead 

 of eight, as usually stated in works upon the osteology of those animals. 

 {Author's abstract.) 



Dr. Shufeldt's paper was discussed by Mr. J. W. GidlEy. 



W. C. KIendall: Trout of the Great West. 



The ancestral Salmonids were marine forms which gradually acquired 

 an anadromous habit, and some of them later a permanent fresh water 

 abode. They had invaded every accessible region suitable to their 

 existence, which their present distribution and the structure of the 

 various species indicate must have been during a time of free inter- 

 communication of oceans, and comparatively uniform conditions in 

 those portions of all seas in which they lived. The latest period when 

 free intercommunication and comparatively uniform conditions ex- 

 isted was during the Tertiary. Paleontology and recent faunas indi- 

 cate that it could not have been prior to the Tertiary. 



The ancestral Salmonids may have occupied the Pacific, Arctic, and 

 Atlantic Oceans, or may have been restricted to the Arctic. Changes 

 which were evidently initiated as early as the Miocene may have 

 pushed some Arctic ancestors southward into the Pacific, if they did 

 not already occur there. It is well established that in the Pliocene the 

 Pacific was cut off from the Arctic by land connections between Alaska 

 and Siberia. The Salmonids were then actually segregated into two 



