532 LOUISE SMITH 



shown by a study of both sections and preparations in toto (figs. 

 4, 5, 9, and 10), it has escaped the notice of most authors, who 

 picture the first ceratobranchials and the second basibranchial 

 as quite separate from each other and articulating with the first 

 basibranchial in the same plane with the second ceratobranchials. 

 In fact, in the literature I find only two references to the plate. 

 Gaupp ('06, p. 705) incidentally mentions that in the visceral 

 skeleton of Triton taeniatus larva, ^'Der ventrale Teil hat die 

 Form einer breiten dreieckigen Platte, die hinten in einen langen 

 medianen Fortsatz, den Copulastiel ( = second basibranchial), 

 auslaiift," and pictures it plainly (p. 706, fig. 35). Mrs. Wilder 

 has carefully worked out the anatomy of the hyobranchial 

 skeleton in Desmognathus fusca and shows, without any shadow 

 of a doubt, that ". . . . the second basibranchial cartilage 

 . . . . during larval life forms one continuous chondrifi- 

 cation with the first pair of ceratobranchials" ('13, p. 320). 

 This she pictures clearly (p. 321, fig. 25 (a)) by a drawing of a 

 methylen-blue preparation. 



Parker ('80) and Driiner ('02) just miss showing it for Sala- 

 mandra maculosa. The former pictures a section a little posterior 

 to the position of the actual continuity of the cartilages and notes 

 that the first ceratobranchials lie ventral to the second, and the 

 latter comes even nearer the truth, for he not only says that the 

 first ceratobranchials "nicht in derselben Frontalebene wie die 

 Hypobranchiale 2 ( = second ceratobranchials) sondern ventral 

 verschoben liegt" (p. 471), but also shows a ventral piece (Taf. 

 25, fig. 3) which corresponds to the second basibranchial plus the 

 median portion of the plate, and with which he makes the first 

 ceratobranchials articulate. If he had not shown this articu- 

 lation, which I am convinced by study of a series of cross-sections, 

 does not exist, he, too, would have pictured the plate. 



I have stated that the plate is probably a universal phenomenon 

 among the larval Salamandrids only, because it is not present 

 even in very young stages of Necturus or Cryptobranchus or in 

 Siren lacertina,^ but it is present in important representatives of 



* In Siren a transitional form may be present, as here the first ceratobranchials 

 and second basibranchials are slightly ventral to the rest of the apparatus (cf. 

 H. H. Wilder, '91, pi. 29, fig. 7). 



