220 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



common fowl, W. K. Parker says, in his invaluable little treatise on 

 the Morphology of the Skull: " The maxillopalatine plates (mx. p.) 

 are broader and reach nearly to the mid line, being separated partly 

 by the nasal septum and partly by the small vomer, which is rounded 

 in front, and split for a short distance behind. The forks of the 

 vomer (v.) articulate with the inner and anterior points of the 

 inner plates of the palatine bones, which lie side by side mesially, 

 nearly concealing the rostrum." [p. 246, 247] Only in one turkey, 

 and that an old domesticated gobbler, did I find any semblance of 

 such a median vomer, and in that specimen it was exceedingly small, 

 close to the ethmoid, and composed of bone of the most elementary 

 character. The aperture which fulfils the office of the " posterior 

 nares " in a bird occurs in this locality, and the free edges of it ex- 

 tend from the anterior inner points of the palatines, to the cor- 

 responding apex of the maxillopalatine, on either side. In the vast 

 majority of the turkey heads which I examined, a delicate rod of 

 bone is found in the soft tissues composing these free edges. So 

 it will be seen that these two little rods of bone [fig. 33, vx\ extend 

 from the anterior inner points of the palatines to the posterior 

 apexes of the maxillopalatines, one of them on either side. Now 

 it is with these " anterior inner points of the palatines " that the 

 vomer in a common fowl articulates, the bone extending forward, 

 as already stated, as a diminutive median spine. This calls up some 

 interesting questions, for say the little semiossiiied piece in the 

 median plane of tissue — which I discovered only in one very old 

 turkey, and in it, it did not fork behind and have the posterior 

 extremities of the forks " articulate with the anterior inner points 

 of the palatines " — does not represent the vomer, but that these 

 little fully ossified rods, that I have just described, do ; then we cer- 

 tainly have a singular departure in the turkey for a gallinaceous 

 type, from the usual order of things. 1 



In a head of a wild turkey now before me, an old adult male, 

 I found no median ossification at all to represent a vomer, but on 

 the contrary both of these little rods are present and thoroughly 

 ossified. As I write about this condition in the turkeys, my mind 

 naturally reverts to what has been held for the Pici, and the or- 



1 At the present writing (Jan. 15, 1901), many years after the above was written, 

 I am inclined to believe that the vomer in Meleagris is in the median line, but it may 

 or may not ossify. The unusual ossifications spoken of above are simply in the free 

 edges of that part of the mucous membrane composing the posterior nares or rather 

 sur. ounding the common posterior aperture of the same. 



