2 WILLIAM K. GREGORY 
In this country the falling off in the total output of compara- 
tive anatomical research has been especially noticeable, and only 
a few Americans have continued along the old paths. In the 
morphology of the vertebrate skull, the special topic of this 
review, it is only here and there, as at Cornell, Tufts and a few 
other centers, that organized and continuous research has resulted 
in such fine contributions as Kingsbury and Reid’s on the colu- 
mella auris in Amphibia (’09) or Thyng’s on the squamosal (’06). 
In Germany, on the contrary, while statistical and experi- 
mental investigations have likewise received an extraordinary 
impetus, the older fields are not left without enthusiastic workers. 
There the problems of the vertebrate skull still have a human 
interest; men still take sides over questions of homology and 
even get to the point of abusing each other in print. 
In certain problems of the vertebrate skull which were opened 
by Cuvier, Owen, Reichert, Kitchen Parker and other pioneers, 
the eminent morphologist of Freiburg whose recent studies it 
is my purpose to review has been a prolific investigator. Thanks 
in no small degree to Gaupp, this subject is no longer in a state 
of fixity and stagnation, but at least in Germany, has again 
become mobile. 
The nomenclature of the skull, alas, is also passing through a 
period of unstable equilibrium. The student soon learns that 
many of the familiar names for the bony elements of the skull, 
names which have become almost sancrosanct through the pres- 
tige of Owen and Huxley, are now being abandoned by certain 
authors, transferred to other elements, or sometimes even trans- 
posed. Squamosal, prosquamosal and supratemporal; prefrontal, 
lacrimal, adlacrimal and postnasal; prevomer, vomer and para- 
sphenoid; orbitosphenoid, alisphenoid and epipterygoid; these 
are examples of names affixed to certain Protean elements, the 
transformations of which in the different Classes have given 
rise to synonymy and confusion. 
