DEVELOPMENT OP THE SKULL IN THE BATRACHIA. 
147 
all things else in this skull. The roof-bones (f p. ) run short in front; the parasphenoid 
( pa.s .) has pointed arms under the ear-capsules; the vomers (v.) are wide apart and 
have only a smallish crop of teeth ; there are no septo-maxillaries; the premaxi]laries 
(px.) are wide but feeble, so also the maxillaries (mx.) have a wide facial plate, but it is 
thin; the quadrato-jugals (q.j.) are not grafted on the quadrate; the squamosals are 
but little developed over the tegmen (fig. 1, sq. ). 
Here, in a few things, the “norma” is not reached; besides the general breadth of 
the parts— 
1. The auditory occipital masses of bone are confluent above. 
2. The lesser fontanelles are very small and have a still smaller space between them. 
3. There are small superorbital projections. 
4. There are no septo-maxillaries. 
5. The supra-stapedial is membranous. 
6. The hyo-branchials are feeble. 
This is a poor list of indictments against this species as coming short of the norma; 
the flatness of the general shape, and of the individual parts, are also no great modi¬ 
fications in the morphology of this very Ranine skull. 
Second genus. Rhacopjliorus. 
37. Rhacophorus maximus. —Adult male ; 3 ( t inches long. North India. 
This large species bears the same relation to the Tree-frogs of India that Pelodryas 
does to those of Australia, and Phyllomedusct to the Neotropical kinds. 
That which characterises the Oriental Polypedatidse, generally, is here carried to 
excess, namely, the great dilatation of the endocranium, especially in the nasal region. 
The length is seven-eighths as great as the breadth ; the quadrate condyles (Plate 2G, 
fig. 5, 6, q.c.) are opposite the passage for the vagus nerve (fig. 6, X.). 
The cranial “ barge,” from the foramen magnum to the great transvere snout, is twice 
the breadth of an average skull of a species of Rana of the same size as this kind. 
The fore skull, leaving out the massive premaxillaries, is as long as the mid skull, and 
is wider : it is extremely wide in the ethmoidal region. The mid skull lessens gently 
to the temporal region, where it is pinched in ; in front it is three times as wide as it is 
deep (figs. 5, 6, 7). 
The antero-posterior extent of the hind skull is half that of either of the other two 
regions, yet the breadth of the cranial cavity is not lessened there, but the parotic 
wings extend far out, as the great breadth would indicate, beyond the horizontal canals 
(fig. 5, h.s.c. ); these wings are rather narrow. The occipital condyles ( oc.c.) are rather 
small for so strong a skull, they are posterior, and are separated by an arched (emar- 
ginate) line of their own breadth. 
The occipito-auditory ossifications are all continuous, as in Polypedates chloronotus, 
u 2 
