1886.] ON THE SKULL OF THE CHAMELEONS. 543 
6. Remarks on Prof. W. K. Parker’s paper on the Skull 
of the Chameleons. By G. A, BouLencER. 
[Received November 25, 1886.] 
I wish to call attention to what I believe to be a serious error 
in Prof. Parker’s paper on the Skull of the Chameleons, printed 
in the last volume of the Society’s ‘Transactions’ (vol. xi. p. 77, 
1881). The adult skulls of two species are described and figured, 
viz. that of Chameleo vulgaris (pl. xvi.) and that of C. pumilus 
(pl. xix.); but, through some error, the skull of a newly born C. 
pumilus is represented (pl. xv.) as that of the common species; and 
as the facts derived from this wrongly-identified species are the basis 
of the author’s arguments, his conclusions receive, in some points 
at least, a severe shock from this discovery. Any one will, I 
think, on comparing the figures, recognize the mistake now that 
attention is drawn to it, and it is incomprehensible that, although 
Prof. Parker’s paper has often been quoted during the five years 
which have elapsed since its publication, it should not have been 
noticed before. No wonder the author states that he knows “ of 
no skull whatever in which the roof-bones undergo so great a 
transformation as in this (C. vulgaris)” or that he should be struck 
by the resemblance of the adult C. pumilus to the young 
C. vulgaris, regarding the one as representing a sort of arrested 
development of the other. I have besides no doubt that he is 
wrong in his interpretation of the three bones forming the roof of 
the casque. As recently suggested by Baur, the critical bone ‘ pa- 
rietal,”” Parker, should be regarded as the supratemporal, and the 
‘*interparietal,” Parker, as the parietal. That the three bones are 
perfectly distinct in the young C. pumilus is well shown on pl. xv. 
fig. 3, and it is not surprising that the sutures should have dis- 
appeared on a skull in which the ossification is so expanded, roofing 
over, as it does, the supratempora! fossee, and studded with tubercles, 
as is the case in the adult C. pumilus. The statement that the skull 
of the latter species is less aberrant than that of the common one is 
therefore incorrect. 
Should further proofs be required, beyond the inspection of Prof. 
Parker’s own plates, to establish my identification of the species 
figured, I might add that the separation of the pre- from the post- 
frontal is a character of C. pumilus, and that the specimen, received 
from Mr. Moore, of Liverpool, was no doubt one of a brood, in the 
possession of Lady Cust, which was born alive in November 1868, 
and on which Mr. Moore reported at the time (cf. Proc. Lit. & 
Phys. Soc. Liverp. xxiii. p. 49). Now, it is well known that 
C. vulgaris is oviparous, and the fact that C. pumilus is ovovivi- 
parous was recorded as early as 1825 (cf. Kaup, Isis, 1825, 
p- 992). 
