DEVELOPMENT OF THE SKULL IN THE URODELES. 209 
11. The occipital condyles are subpedunculate, and separated by a large notch for 
the “‘ odontoid rudiment.” 
12. The halves of the endocranium are only united in front and behind by a very 
narrow tract of cartilage; most of the basal plate behind, both trabecular and para- 
chordal, has been absorbed; but, right and left, cartilage is seen on the occipital con- 
dyles, the stapedial operculum, the basipterygoid facets, and in the alisphenoidal walls. 
13. The unossified nasal roofs are wide apart, right and left; but they have coalesced 
with the cornua trabecule and the ethmopalatines. 
14. Besides its condyle, the suspensorium has much cartilage above; and its narrow 
pterygoid foregrowth is only partially incrusted into bone; it has no part severed from 
its root. It is confluent above ; but the pedicle and otic process are free: the direction 
of the suspensorium is unchanged; it looks forwards as well as downwards and out- 
wards. 
15. Between the nasals above, and the vomers below, the ‘“‘ middle nasal passage” is 
permanently visible. 
16. The articulo-Meckelian rod is only partially converted into bone, and that mostly 
on the upper part. 
17. There is no epihyal or pharyngohyal element; therefore, as a correlate of the 
early closure of the tympanic (first) cleft, there is no columella attached to the stapes ; 
and as there is no rudiment of a cochlea, there is no fenestra rotunda. 
18. There are no hypohyals; the ceratohyals are large and ossified in the upper 
narrower part. 
19. The branchial apparatus is reduced to a semiosseous first basibranchial ; the 
second becomes entirely absorbed in old age—a first arch with an ossified epi- and 
cerato-branchial, and an unossified, shrunken, second cerato-branchial. 
Many curious minor modifications take different places in “‘ Caducibranchs,” as I have 
shown in my papers in the ‘ Philosophical Transactions’ (1877, pls. 21-29, pp. 529-597) 
and the ‘ Transactions’ of the Linnean Society (new series, Zool. 1880). 
But the most important modifications of the skull in this, the highest, division of the 
Urodeles have been described and figured by Wiedersheim in his invaluable works. 
The Skull of the Adult Triton cristatus compared with other Types. 
The skull of the Common Warty Newt, like that of our native Frog, serves well for 
a pattern to measure others by; it is more transformed than that of an adult Spotted 
Salamander, which retains a postclinoid band of cartilage, and exceptionally, like Siren 
lacertina, has a prenasal rostrum. 
Some types of the “ Caducibranchs” have a small columella, as I have shown, viz. in 
Spelerpes and Desmognathus (see Trans. Linn. Soc. 1880, pls. 18, 20,21); and others, as 
Ellipsoglossa nevia, Ranodon sibiricus, Desmognathus fuscus (Wiedersheim, op. cit. 
pl. 5), have, like Steboldia, an epihyal rudiment confluent with the hinder margin of 
