118 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
RECENT LITERATURE 
Gregory, William K. Studies in Comparative Myology and Osteology: 
No. IV. — A Review of the Evolution of the Lacrymal Bone of Vertebrates 
WITH Special Reference to that of Mammals. Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., 
vol. 42, pp. 95-263; 196 text figs, and 1 plate. December 4, 1920. 
This important contribution to the literature of mammals “has partly grown 
out of a difference of opinion between Dr. J. L. Wortman” and the author “con- 
cerning the probable course of evolution of the lacrymal bone in Primates.” In 
the introduction is a “Synopsis of the classification of the vertebrates adopted 
in this work,” including the lower vertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, 
and mammals. “The present classification of the mammalia has grown out of 
the classification adopted in ‘The Orders of Mammals’ (1910, Bull. Amer. Mus. 
Nat. Hist., XXVII) and is intended to reflect the chief advances of the last decade 
in this subject.” The arrangement of the orders in this new classification is 
as follows; the extinct groups have been marked f (by the reviewer). 
fProtodonta 
Monotremata 
fTriconodonta 
fMultituberculata (Allotheria) 
Marsupialia 
fTrituberculata 
Insectivora (Centetoidea, Soricoidei, 
Erinaceoidei, Pantolestoidei) 
fTillodontia 
Carnivora (including Pinnipedia) 
Cetacea 
Artiodactyla 
fAmblypoda 
fEmbrithopoda 
fPyrotheria 
Proboscidea 
Sirenia 
fCondylarthra 
Tubulidentata 
fLitopterna 
fNotoungulata 
Hyracoidea 
Perissodactyla 
Edentata 
Rodentia 
Lagomorpha 
Dermoptera 
Chiroptera 
Menotyphla (the tupaioid “insecti 
vores”) 
Primates 
Following other introductory matter is an account of the lacrymal region in 
mammals, with numerous drawings to illustrate the text, and with much inter- 
esting discussion as to the origin of various groups. In his “Summary of the 
evolution of the lacrymal bone,” the author says that the present study “lends 
strong support to the so-called ‘Cuvierian concept:’ namely, that the lacrymal 
of mammals is the homologue of the lacrymal of the Crocodilia, as named by most 
authors up to the time of Gaupp and Jaekel, who, on the contrary, held that the 
Cuvierian concept was erroneous and that the lacrymal of mammals had been 
derived from the so-called prefrontal of reptiles.” 
The last section of this work, “The lacrymal problem in its phyletic and taxo- 
nomic aspects: a phylogenetic review of the vertebrates,” is of particular inter- 
est, and Doctor Gregory at the outset remarks that “the elements of the lacrymal 
complex being relatively few in number, it is not surprising to find more or less 
similar combinations sometimes occurring independently in widely different 
groups, so that in such cases a similarity in the pattern of the lacrymal region does 
