392 Coe and Kunkel— California Limbless Lizard. 
Apparently in the specimens examined, the eye in the paler variety 
(pulehra) was not as clearly seen as in the darker variety (nigra), 
in which the pigment seemed to be much more completely removed 
from the “ cornea.” 
As in all lizards probably that possess a pineal eye, the skin is 
firmly attached to the underlying bone in this region. Spencer (’s6) 
mentions that this peculiarity is constant, even in those forms in 
which the parietal organ is exceedingly rudimentary. The parietal 
bone over the pineal eye has the appearance of being etched when 
examined with a hand lens. Sections through this region (Pl. xiv, 
fig. 49) show the presence of rather stout, straight connective tissue 
fibers (c.4) which pass in a vertical or slightly oblique direction 
completely through the bone and are continuous with the fibers in 
the dermis. The laminae of the bone (pa), which elsewhere are 
very prominent, are interrupted and obliterated by these fibers. 
There is no parietal foramen, but the fused parietal bones contain 
an excavation on the under side in which the pineal eye lies. This 
pit is in the middle line, near the anterior margin. There is a 
slight bulging corresponding to the pit on the dorsal side and around 
the depression internally is a marked thickening, so that the pineal 
eye lies in a cavity much deeper than the average thickness of the 
bone in that region. Careful measurements of the bones in one 
specimen showed that the elevation around the pit had a thickness 
nearly five times that of the parts of the parietal bone adjacent and 
eight times that of the bony cap over the foramen. The pit is 
elliptical in shape, with its long axis parallel to the axis of the lizard 
and of about twice the length of the short axis. 
The pineal eye is situated at the bottom of the pit, pressed against 
the parietal bone dorsally. It is somewhat more flattened in the 
adult than in the embryo. Béraneck (’87) has noted that in Angwis 
the cavity is somewhat smaller in older embryos than in young ones, 
and although this has not been observed in the material examined, it 
seems probable that the flattening of the eye in the adult may be of 
the same significance. The eye is slightly smaller than the pit, so 
that there is a considerable space surrounding it which is filled with 
a much vacuolated tissue (v), similar to that described by Spencer 
for Anolis and Anguis, consisting of a loose network of fibers and 
large vacuolated cells containing very little cytoplasm. 
In the embryos studied, in which the cranial cartilages were only 
partially laid down and were entirely absent in the region of the 
pineal eye, this organ was situated in the ventral portion of the 
