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II. The Bakerian Lecture. — On the Structure and Development of the Skull in the 
Salmon (Salmo salar, L.). By William Kitchen Parker, F.B.S. 
Received April 18, — Read May 30, 1872. 
Introductory Bemarks. 
At the close of my last communication, on the Frog’s Skull, I promised to bring 
forward a paper on that of the Salmon ; indeed the present paper should have appeared 
next after my memoir on the Skull of the Fowl (see Phil. Trans. 1869, p. 804) ; but the 
invaluable labours of my friend Professor Huxley on the “ face ” of the Vertebrata 
(see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1869, pp. 391-407) deflected me for the time, and I was led to 
labour at the Amphibia. This new subject has been fraught with as much pleasure as 
the one before it ; for although the Salmon begins as a higher type and ends as a lower 
than the Frog, yet it also undergoes no little metamorphosis, and its transformations 
are not a whit less instructive than those of the Frog. Moreover, let this be said in 
praise of this fish, that its eggs and its fry are the most exquisite objects the morpho- 
logical observer can ever hope to spend his time upon — their size and their diaphanous 
character making them excellent subjects for section, dissection, and viewing under any 
and every degree of magnifying-power. As to the source of these specimens, it is due 
to the donors that their names should be mentioned here ; they are my friends Messrs. 
B. Waterhouse Hawkins, Frank Buckland, and Henry Lee, who have most kindly put 
every valuable specimen into my hands that I have desired, not only for this paper, but 
for others completed, in hand, or in prospect. 
Cuvier must be taken as the great pioneer in this branch of Ichthyotomy ; many of 
his determinations are excellent, yet, from His not having worked out the development 
of the Fish, several of his terms are not defensible. 
My own earlier study of the Fish’s skull was assisted by Professor Owen’s well-known 
‘Lectures on the Vertebrata’ (vol. ii.) ; his modification of the Cuvierian nomenclature 
is very elegant and useful. Of course the determination of homologies will differ largely 
when one worker looks at them from the transcendental stand-point, whilst another 
creeps up to them from below, caring only to see them in the light of development : my 
divergence from this “ guide ” was soon to take place. 
Professor Huxley’s Croonian Lecture, delivered before the Loyal Society on June the 
17th, 1858, gave a painful but healthy shock to my mind; having learned that the 
whole subject had been begun from the wrong end, it took some time to acquire calmness 
and courage to begin afresh. Help, however, came in time ; and the same author threw 
MDCCCLXXIII. 
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