1885.] Zoölogy. 1007 
ogy between parts of the mammalian skull and elements present 
in the lower vertebrates. 
By a course of reasoning based upon the examination of skulls 
in which ossification was defective at some point or other, this 
anatomist has found the quadrate bone of reptiles to be present 
in mammals in its normal position, but to synostose with the 
squamosal early in life; he has found the symplectic of the fish in 
the malleus of the mammal; he identifies the piscean hyoman- 
dibular with the incus, os orbiculare and stapes, basing his identi- 
fication on an actual division of the columella which is known to 
occur; he finds the metapterygoid transformed into the squamo- 
sal; while he sees the ectopterygoid of the fish in the mam- 
malian alisphenoid, the entopterygoid in the pterygoid and the 
preoperculum in the tympanic bones. 
MM. Serres, Rambaad, Renault and Ihering agree in homolo- 
gizing the postfrontal with the external orbital hypophysis of 
mammals, and M. Albrecht agrees in the identification. 
a communication relating to the “epipituitary spondylo- 
centers of the skull” he traces the remains of the primitive pas- 
sage of the dorsal chord through the series of vertebrae which 
form the basicranium. After leaving the basiotic part of the 
occipital, the passage, according to M. Albrecht, continues adove 
the hypophysis in the clivus (dorsum sella) of the basipost- 
sphenoid, and thence through the basipresphenoid, basiethmoid 
and basirhinoid or cartilage of the nose. M. Albrecht speaks of 
an adult mammal in which this basirhinoid was traversed 
throughout its whole length by the chorda dorsalis. In some 
cases (Rhinoceros tichorhinus) it may ossify as one bone, in others 
as a series of centers of vertebrae. Between these bones (cranio- 
the meta- and ectopterygoid bones with the alisphenoid and 
Squamosal, and of the quadrate with the lower part of the same 
temporal. The symplectic and hyomandibular have, according 
to our author (Sur la valeur morphologique de la trompe Eus- 
tache) nothing to do with the hyoid arch. The mere fact that the 
