788 The American Naturalist. [September, 
Seeley on the Fossil Reptiles: II. Pareiasaurus; VI. The 
Anomodontia and their Allies; VII. Further Observations 
on Pariasaurus.’—Professor H. G. Seeley has again made the scien- 
tific world his debtors by his descriptions of new forms of South Afri- 
can fossil reptiles; by his extensive comparisons of the characters of 
these, the oldest known members of the class; and by his very full 
study of that remarkable form, the Pariasaurus of Owen. These works 
are valuable to students of the Reptilia of corresponding age in other 
parts of the world, and especially to those of the American forms. The 
descriptions are elucidated by cuts and plates. 
Prof. Seeley has shown that the genus Pareisaurus is allied to the 
American Diadectidx, and that it represents a distinct family of the 
same order, the Cotylosauria. His proposition of a new ordinal name, 
Pariasauria, is perhaps due to the fact that the original definition of the 
Cotylosauria was defective in one respect. The corrected definition 
was published later, and in the same year as the proposal of the new 
name by Dr. Seeley. 
Several important points of both anatomy and taxonomy are pre- 
sented in these memoirs, on which I propose to touch. In the first 
place, no one had, at the time that these memoirs were written, distin- 
guished between roof-bones and the bones of the brain case, in the Rep- 
tilia. Although the two series are to be entirely distinguished in all 
vertebrates which possess them, the same names have been used vari- 
ously for opposite or adjacent elements of both. The names squamosal, 
epiotic and opisthotic have thus been used in double senses. For the . 
posterior bones of the temporal roof I have adopted the terms zygo- 
matic, supratemporal, supramastoid* and tabulare? The supratem- 
poral is called squamosal by Seeley. But the squamosal is a bone of 
the lateral wall of the brain case, and cannot be identified with any 
one of the three possible post-orbital bars of the Reptilia, which may 
be composed posteriorly of either the zygomatic, supratemporal or sup- 
ramastoid. The epiotic of Seely and of some others is the tabulare m., 
and has nothing to do with the original epiotic of Huxley. 
Prof. Seeley describes the Placodontia as possessing two occipital 
condyles, which have the position of zygapophysial articulations. The 
basioccipital he describes as presenting “a thin film of bone” poster- 
iorly on the middle line. Perhaps the basioccipital bone with its con- 
? From the Philosoph. Transac. Royal Society of London, 1888, p. 59; 1889, p. 
215, and 1892, p. 311. Illustrated. 
* Transac. Amer. Philosoph. Soc., 1892, 11. 
5 Proceeds. Amer. Philosoph. Soc., 1894, 110. 
