146 EDWARD L. RICE 
Except for the changes in the orientation of the capsule in the 
mammals, due to the reduction in the relative size of the semi- 
circular canals, Eumeces conforms more closely to the above 
description of the mammal than to that of the reptile, even to 
the presence of the intercapsular plate of cartilage bounding the 
facialis foramen anteriorly. Attention should, however, be 
called to the limitation of the homology with the reptilian fora- 
men faciale to the central part only of the mammalian canalis 
facialis; the distal portion of this canal, beginning at the hiatus 
spurius and the facialis ganglion, is unquestionably a secondary 
addition. 
In a slightly different connection, Voit (09 a) has given a series 
of very interesting diagrammatic figures illustrating the compara- 
tive relations of the facialis foramen, nerve, and ganglion in rep- 
tiles and mammals. Except for the newly added lateral wall of 
the secondarily enlarged cavum cranii, his figures for the mammal 
(figs. 1 ec and 1 ¢,) might almost have been drawn from my sec- 
tions of Eumeces. Noordenbos (’05) has also emphasized the 
essential homology of the facialis foramen in mammal and reptile, 
but describes the mammalian foramen as wholly surrounded by 
the cartilage of the otic capsule. Gaupp’s interpretation of the 
intercapsular bridge in the mammals as belonging to the basal 
plate seems far more probable. It is unquestionably such in 
Eumeces. 
_ In the passage just quoted, Gaupp has explained the difference 
between mammal and reptile as due to the progressive invasion 
of the basal plate by the enlarging cochlea—an actual appro- 
priation, for the formation of the cochlear capsule in the higher 
forms, of material serving as part of the basal plate in the lower 
forms. ‘This process begins in the reptiles and culminates in the 
mammals. This view, reiterated in later papers (05 b, 706, 
708 a), has met with rather general acceptance. Noordenbos 
(05), however, has criticised it severely, as applied to the Mam- 
malia, on the ground of the independent ontogenetic development 
of the otic capsule and its relatively late fusion with the basal 
plate, and Schauinsland (’00) apparently describes a similar inde- 
