ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 113 



palato-maxillary arch : they rest below iiiwn the presphenoiti and 

 vomer, support above the fore part of the frontal and the back 

 part of the nasal bones, and, by their outer or i'acial extension, 

 give attachment to the large antorbital or lacrymal bone. They 

 are ossified in and from pre-existing cranial cartilage. 



Such are the essential characters of the bones which Cuvier has 

 called ' frontaux anterieures ' ' in Fishes, and to which I apply the 

 name of ' prefrontal ' in all classes of Vertebrate animals. In the 

 Cyprinoids, and most Halecoids, the jirefrontals form part of an 

 interorbital septum. When anchylosis begins to prevail in the 

 cranial bones of Fishes, the prefrontals manifest their essential 

 relationship to the vomerine and nasal bones by becoming confluent 

 with them : thus we recognise the prefrontals in the confluent 

 parts of the nasal vertebra of the Conger, by the external groove 

 conducting the olfactory nerves to the nasal capsules, and l^y the 

 inferior process from which the palatine bone is suspended.'^ In 

 the Murmia-, also, the prefrontals are plainly confluent with the 

 nasal, 15, bone, and form the well marked articular surfaces for the 

 palato-maxillary bone. In some fishes a process of the prefrontal 

 circumscribes the foramen by which the olfactory ' crus ' finally 

 emerges from the anterior prolongation of the cranio-vertebral 

 canal. In the Carp this j^art of the brain traverses a deep notch 

 on the inner side of the prefrontal, fig. 8.3, u. In the Cod the 

 palatine arch is chiefly but not wholly suspended to the prefron- 

 tals. The right prefrontal is the smallest in the unsymmetrical 

 skulls of the flat-fishes. 



The nasal hone is usually single, and terminates forward in a 

 thick obtuse extremity. The anterior end of the nasal is deepest 

 in those Fishes which have a small maxillary arch susj)ended from 

 the cranial axis by vertical palatines, and which have a large 



' ' Deux frontaux anterieures, qui donnent passage aux nerfs olfactifs, ferment Ics 

 orbites en avant, s'appuyeiit sur le sphenoido et le vomer, et donnent atlaclic par une 

 facette de leur borde inferienre aux palatins.' — Zepjiis d' Anat. Comp,n. 1837, p. 606. 

 Compare this enuneiation of the essential characters of the anterior frontals with 

 Cuvicr's descriptions of the bones to which he applies that name in otlier classes, and 

 with the variable determinations of the same bones by other anatomists — le laerymat, 

 GeofFroy and Spix ; lamina cribrosa ossis ethmoidei of Bojanus ; seitliehe re'ichheine, 

 Meckel, Wagner. Without at present entering into the respective merits or demerits 

 of these determinations, I shall only state that the prefrontals, under whatever names 

 they are described, are essentially the neurapophyses of the nasal vertebra, and that 

 the failure in the attempt to determine the special homologies of these bones may, in 

 every case, be traced to the non-appreciation of their true general homology. 



'■^ In the Conger, Cuvier ' recognises the prefrontals as persistent cartilages. 



' Op. cit. (.\nr,), ii. p. 235. 

 VOL. I. I 



