Gallus Bankiva of India. 11 
the sphenotic above and the squamosal below, so character- 
istic of all skulls of Gallinaceous birds. Ifere in the male 
jungle fowl, the sphenotic process is somewhat the longer 
of the two, is compressed from side to side, and within, 
continuous with the ali-sphenoidal surface of the cranium 
by means of an ali-osseous extension. Its tip is free, while 
I find in the female specimen it is completely fused with 
the end of the squamosal apophysis, thus including a tem- 
poral foramen between them. 
According to Parker this latter state is rather to be 
regarded as the normal or more constant condition. The 
squamosal process is here a very thin lamina of bone, later- 
ally compressed, and as in the case of the sphenotic or 
post-frontal one, directed downwards and forwards. Pass- 
ing next into the cavity of the orbit, we find the optic 
foramen large and single, merging. as it does, with the 
corresponding opening of the opposite side. This is also 
found to be the case with the foraminal aperture for the 
first pair of nerves; vacuities may exist, however, on the 
posterior cranial wall to the outer side of the latter, as 
they here do in the skull of my female specimen. Beyond 
these openings the znterorbital septum is represented by a 
thin plate of bone, pierced near its centre in the cock’s 
skull by a considerable fenestra, of an irregular outline, 
while this plate in the hen exhibits only an unbroken sur- 
face, as we find it in most North American Tetraonide. 
Pars plana is found to be entirely in membrano-cartilage, 
unossified in the adult ; while the mesethmoid rises as a 
thickened pillar, to spread out above, as usual, as an abut- 
ment for the overlying frontals and nasals above. Pos- 
teriorly the orbital wall is smooth and gently arched 
throughout, being concaved in continuation with the con- 
cavity of the vault above, which is furnished by the frontal 
bone. Darwin, when he came to compare the structures 
to be examined as the base of the skull in the various 
species of domestic fowls, was forced to remark that “the 
bones at the base, from the occipital foramen to the anterior 
end (including the quadrates and pterygoids), are abso- 
lutely identical in shape in all the skulls. So is the lower 
