390 CRETACEOUS REPTILES. 
vertebra, as they extend forwards from the place of the scapular arch in the fossil, 
at the eighteenth or twentieth vertebra, to the cranium, and the remarkable and 
striking difference in the shape and size of the pleurapophyses (vertebral ribs, 
pl, pl) in those anterior vertebrze, I am led to conclude that the position of the 
remains of the scapular arch (51) in the fossil was, in relation to the vertebral 
column, its true position in the skeleton of the living reptile, and that the 
vertebrz anterior to it answer to those which are called cervical by Cuvier, in 
those existing Lizards which have four well-developed extremities. 
The artificial character of the ‘cervical’ vertebre of anatomy is more 
obvious in the Lacertine Sauria than in most other vertebrates. Cuvier, who 
has assigned a given number of such vertebra to several species of Lacertians 
in his ‘ Table of the Vertebree of Reptiles*,’ does not define their characters. 
He merely observes that ‘‘ they have inferior crests like the anterior dorsal ver- 
tebret.” 
With regard to the Monitor (Varanus) Cuvier affirms, in another work}, that 
the ‘‘ inferior crest distinguishes the cervical from the dorsal vertebre ;” but he 
admits that the first three of these dorsal vertebree have an inferior tubercle. 
Proceeding next to speak of the American Monitor (Monitor proper, or Tejus), 
he says,—‘* Les vertébres cervicales, déterminées par les fausses cotes antérieures, 
sont au nombre de huit, c’est-d-dire qu'il y a six paires de ces fausses cétes$.” 
This number of so-defined cervicals is found in the Iguanians, Basiliscs, true 
Lizards, Geckos, Anolises, Agamians and Stellios. But Cuvier avows that two 
if not three of the last of these cervical vertebre, although their false ribs (pleur- 
apophyses) do not reach the sternum, are embraced by the scapular arch, and 
concur in the formation of the chest: if these be accordingly subtracted, the 
number of cervicals will be reduced, Cuvier says, to five. In the ‘ Table of 
Vertebra ’ above-cited only four cervicals are allowed to the Iguana, Basilisc, 
the banded Gecko, Anolis, Agama, and Levantine Stellio. There isa difference, 
however, in the number assigned to some of these species in the table in the 
‘Ossemens Fossiles|.’ But all these discrepances depend on the arbitrary and 
inconsistent characters that have been assigned to the cervical vertebra of Lizards. 
Recognizing the artificial nature of such a group of vertebra, I believe that 
that character would be most easily determined, and, therefore, most convenient 
in its application, which should be founded on the absence of sternal ribs 
* Lecons d’Anat. Comp. i. (1835) p. 220. + Jb. p. 215. 
{ Ossemens Fossiles, 4to, v. pt. ii. p. 284. § Ib. p. 285. || Tom. cit. p. 288 
