1891.] SAUROGNATHISM OF THE PICI. 123 



cranial base in these forms, that he suggested a separate group for the 

 Pici, viz. the Celeomorphce. 



But in characterizing this group, he was, from an insufficient 

 supply of material, led into several errors, — errors of omission and 

 errors of commission, — which have since been appreciated by the 

 avian morphologist. Professor Huxley held that in the Wood- 

 peckers " the vomers are very delicate rod-like bones, which in 

 some cases, at any rate, remain permanently separate." It will be 

 observed that he makes no reference to that median bone which is 

 seen to lie between the palatines in some species, and which Parker 

 afterwards designated as the " medio-palatine." 



It would be superfluous for me to enter upon the question here of 

 the enormous, and upon the whole beneficial, influence this masterly 

 and opportune memoir has had upon the study of avian structure 

 and taxonomy. 



Later on Professor Garrod called into question the conception of 

 these parts as arrived at by Professor Huxley \ 



Garrod remarked that " Professor Huxley, in his paper ' On the 

 Classification of Birds,' has entered into considerable detail respect- 

 ing the "Woodpecker's palate, and from not finding a vomer present, 

 and observing the peculiar longitudinal bony spicula connected with 

 the inner edges of the palatine bones, opposite to and behind the 

 fenestrse they assist to enclose, is led to think that these spicula are 

 the rudiments of the vomer, which has not ossified across the middle 

 line. But in carefully prepared skulls they look much more like the 

 inner edges of the imperfectly ossified palatines, as they are connected 

 completely with them at both ends. Further, in most of the speci- 

 mens of Gecinus viridis and its allies that I have had the opportunity 

 of examining, I have found a median bone, situated between the 

 palatines, and supported like a vomer on the basisphenoid rostrum, 

 at the anterior end of its broader portion. This bone is small, and 

 shaped very much like a spear-head with the tip directed forwards, 

 whilst posteriorly it gradually becomes fibrous and tends to bifurcate, 

 but not in the ossified part. It does not extend backwards quite so 

 far as the pterygo-palatine articulation." 



It is evident that Garrod saw the vomer of the Pici in the median 

 bone which Professor Huxley had overlooked, and construed the 

 spicula given off by the palatine bones, not as vomers, but as palatine 

 spurs of processes. 



Next appears the beautiful monograph of Professor W. Kitchen 

 Parker, entitled " On the Morphology of the Skull in the Wood- 

 peckers (Picidse) and Wrynecks (Yungidse)," which was read before 

 the Linnean Society of London in April 1874. It is illustrated by 

 five superb 4to plates coloured, giving enlarged views of the skulls of 

 several Woodpeckers, lynx, &c. In this work Professor Parker 

 essentially adopted the views of Huxley in the premisses and amplified 

 them. The saurognathism of the Pici, however, evidently still had its 

 doubters and opponents, for in the work just quoted Professor Parker 



^ G-arrod, A. W., " Note on some of the Ci'anial Peculiarities of the Wood- 

 peckers," Ibis, 1872, pp. 357-60, October 1. 



