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Show 188 MR. PARKER ON THE SKULL OF CHAMELEONS. [Mar. 16, the type specimen in the British Museum that he had been able to identify the form. H e hoped to be able ere long to give a full account of its structure. Mr. W . A. Forbes, F.Z.S., Prosector to the Society, read a description of the male generative organs of the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sumatrensis), as observed in an adult male specimen which died in the Society's Gardens in 1879. This paper will be published in the Society's f Transactions.' Mr. W . K. Parker read the following abstract of a memoir on the structure of the skull in the Chameleons :- " I have worked out the skull in the adult and newly-hatched young of Chameeleo vulgaris and in the adult of C. pumilus. The results satisfy m e that the Chameleons are a very isolated group, far further removed from the ordinary Lacertilia than even the New- Zealand Hatteria (or Sphenodon). "Their skull is extremely ornate, and greatly developed upwards and behind by the breaking up of the parietal region into three bones, the middle piece becoming the large arched crest. " They have no ' epipterygoidean columella,' only one vomer, an abortively developed single premaxillary, an arrested auditory apparatus, with no drum-cavity, no cochlea, and no fenestra rotunda. The basihyal is as long as the skull and highly ossified; the teeth are all ankylosed to the upper and lower jaws. These, and many other things, show that these Lizards require to be kept at a great distance (zoologically) from all the other groups. " B y comparing the skulls of the new-born Chameleon, of the adult of the Dwarf Chameleon, and of the adult of the C o m m o n Chameleon with those of other Lizards, especially of the typical genus Lacerta, I have been able to understand the modifications that have taken place in this most extraordinary type, in the skull of which I have counted as many as twenty-five modifications of structure as compared with what is normal in the Lacertilia. " A species of Iguanoid from Mexico, viz. Lcemanotus longipes, has a very small and greatly crested skull, which gives this Lizard a very Chameleonoid appearance. This skull, with that of the less-modified Dwarf Chameleon, has helped m e greatly. " The skull of the newly hatched young of the typical Chameleon comes very near that of the young of any other kind of Lizard in the condition of its roof-bones-the parts that become so transformed afterwards; and in passing from it to the skull of the adult, I have been glad to lay down any stepping-stones I could find. " At some future time I hope to give the morphology of the skull in Lcemanotus and in Hatteria." This paper will be published entire in the Society's 'Transactions.' The following papers were read:- |
