6 Observations Upon the Morphology of 
Darwin, when he came to compare the extraordinary 
forms the skull assumes in many of the domestic breeds of 
fowls with the skull of the wild Gallus bankiva, pointed 
out for us quite a number of the salient features in the 
skull of the latter species,* and it will be my aim in the 
present paper to discuss these more in detail, and without 
any attempt to make comparisons with domestic species, 
touch more fully upon the differences found in the skulls of 
the male and female Gallus bankiva, as seen in the two 
specimens now before me. In doing this, I must once 
more remind my reader of a fact that I have so often 
insisted upon in others of my memoirs, and that is, that 
the individual variation of the skull for the same species 
may be marked to a marvelous degree in some specimens, 
and we may have as an example a thick and unperforated 
interorbital septum in the skullof one bird, and a thin one, 
showing a large vacuity in the same osseous partition in 
the skull of another individual of the same species. Still 
more manifest differences may extend to size and even 
form of such parts as beak, brain-case, and basi-temporal 
area. So, then, under such circumstances, the description 
I here present for the skull of the jungle fowl will hardly 
hold good for all details in other specimens of the same 
species, although, no doubt, the main characteristics will 
be found descriptive of the vast majority of skulls. These 
remarks are equally applicable to the remaining parts of 
the skeleton. ; 
As is generally the case with gallinaceous fowls, the 
premaxillary develops conspicuous nasal and maxillary 
processes ; the former being longitudinally separated for 
their hinder two-thirds, with the posterior ends almost 
entirely covering the ethmoid where it makes its appear- 
ance anteriorly between the frontals. In domestic fowls 
the ethmoid is sometimes not overlapped at all at this 
point, but is exposed as an escutcheon-shaped area of some 
considerable size.+ 
* Darwin, Cu. ‘‘ Animalsand Plants Under Domestication.” Vol. I., pp. 
315-321, Am, Ed., 1868. 
+ See Prof. W. K. Parxer’s figure (Fig. 19) of the skull of common fowl in 
the 9th ed. of Brit. Encyclopedia, Vol. III., p. 709, eth. 
