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VII. On the Structure of the Skull in the Chameleons. 
By W. K. Parser, F.R.S., F.Z.S. 
Received March 15th, 1880. 
[Puates XV.-XIX.] 
BESIDES specimens in my collection of full-grown Chameleons of the common kind 
and one of the dwarf kind (C. pumilus), I received, some years since, a new-born young 
one of the common species from my friend Mr. T. J. Moore, of Liverpool. 
This gave me an opportunity of comparing an early condition of this strangely formed 
skull with its permanent form ; and the comparison of the two stages gave me the most 
unexpected results: I found that the conception I had formed of the high, posterior 
part of the skull, by comparison of it with the same parts in other Lizards, was as wrong 
as could well be, and that my interpretation of these coalesced and highly modified 
parts was worth as much as all guesswo1k is worth, viz. worse than nothing. 
Having found my “ key,” I shall use it carefully in opening the meaning of this, the 
most singular of all skulls. I shall describe the adult skull first, being confident now 
of its true meaning; and of it I shall take the outworks first and the inner building 
afterwards. Then the skull of the young will be described, and its conformity and 
nonconformity to other and more typical kinds of Lacertilian skulls shown. 
After that the dwarf kind will yield its less aberrant skull, to show that there is 
nothing absolutely unchangeable in any type of skull, but that the more striking modi- 
fications of structure are mobile as it were, and are always ready to oscillate this way 
and that towards other morphological types and patterns. 
Nothing is easier than to speak glibly of generalized types and of types that are spe- 
cialized ; in practice, however, no such facility is possible. Here is a family of Lizards 
whose whole construction is special and aberrant to a marvellous and almost unique 
degree; and yet these very types are the most archaic, the lowest, and the most 
generalized, in many respects, of all the known Lacertilia. 
So much so is this the case, that every zoologist or anatomist describing the Lizards, 
as a group, and giving their zoological and morphological characters, would have to 
qualify one half of his description by repeatedly saying, “except in the Chameleons.” 
I have long ago shown how remarkably this type differs from the other Lizards in its 
VOL. X1.—ParT 1. No. 4.—WMarch, 1881. (0) 
