20 Observations Upon the Morphology of 
others with the sternum, and I must believe this to be the 
normal arrangement in the case of the species before us. 
Darwin has amply shown that it varies widely in many of 
the domesticated fowls, and from his and my own studies, 
I am inclined to believe that the time will come when there 
will appear domesticated races of fowls in which all the 
vertebre in the adult, from atlas to pelvis inclusive, will 
remain free segments, and codssification in the dorsal 
region not occur. Gallus bankiva also normally possesses 
‘‘sacral ribs,” which spring from the leading fused verte- 
bral of the pelvic sacrum, are long and slender, and with- 
out uncinate processes. At their lower ends they articu- 
late with haazmapophyses. Each one of these latter bones 
has a much-expanded and laterally compressed posterior 
extremity, while anteriorly its end articulates with the 
hinder margin of the ultimate haemapophysis, at a short 
distance above the costal border of the sternum of the cor- 
responding side. Briefly recapitulating then, we find that 
G. bankiva normally possesses seven pairs of ribs ; the first 
two pair fail to connect with the sternum, which is the 
case with four pairs that succeed them ; finally there is a 
seventh, or sacral pair, which articulate below with what 
may be called a pair of “‘floating ribs,” not using, how- 
ever, this latter term quite in its anthropotomical or even 
crocodilian sense. 
Perhaps of all the larger bones of the axial skeleton, the 
pelvis has retained its primitive form more than any other 
among the many domesticated breeds as compared with 
that bone in the original stock of them.all, the G. bankiva 
at my hand. I felt that my work upon this part of the 
skeleton was more than half accomplished when I com- 
pleted the drawings presented in Figs. 13, 14 and 15, and 
yet how little the last-named one differs from Parker’s 
figure of the pelvis in the common barn-yard fowl.* 
To be sure Darwin found that the anterior margin of the 
ilium varied from a rounded to a truncate outline ; that 
the extremity of the pubic bones were ‘‘ gradually enlarged 
*See Fig. 34, Hneycl. Brit., 9th Ed., p. 722, and numerous copies eisewhere, 
