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Show 18S6.] ON THE SKULL OF T H E CHAMELEONS. 543 6. Remarks on Prof. W. K. Parker's paper on the Skull of the Chameleons. By G. A. BOULENGER. [Received November 25, 1886.] I wish to call attention to what I believe to be a serious error in Prof. Parker's paper on the Skull of the Chameleons, printed in the last volume of the Society's * Transactions ' (vol. xi. p. 77, 1881). The adult skulls of two species are described and figured, viz. that of Chamaleo vulgaris (pi. xvi.) and that of C. pumilus (pi. xix.); but, through some error, the skull of a newly born C. pumilus is represented (pi. xv.) as that of the common species ; and as the facts derived from this wrongly-identified species are the basis of the author's arguments, his conclusions receive, in some points at least, a severe shock from this discovery. Any one will, I think, on comparing the figures, recognize the mistake now that attention is drawn to it, and it is incomprehensible that, although Prof. Parker's paper has often been quoted during the five years which have elapsed since its publication, it should not have been noticed before. No wonder the author states that he knows " of no skull whatever in which the roof-bones undergo so great a transformation as in this (C. vulgaris) " or that he should be struck by the resemblance of the adult C. pumilus to the young C. vulgaris, regarding the one as representing a sort of arrested development of the other. I have besides no doubt that he is wrong in his interpretation of the three bones forming the roof of the casque. As recently suggested by Baur, the critical bone "parietal," Parker, should be regarded as the supratemporal, and the "interparietal," Parker, as tbe parietal. That the three bones are perfectly distinct in the young C. pumilus is well shown on pi. xv. fig. 3, and it is not surprising that the sutures should have disappeared on a skull in which the ossification is so expanded, roofin°- over, as it does, the supratemporal fossae, and studded with tubercles, as is the case in the adult C.pumilus. The statement that the skull of the latter species is less aberrant than that of the common one is therefore incorrect. Should further proofs be required, beyond the inspection of Prof. Parker's own plates, to establish my identification of the species figured, I might add that the separation of the prae- from the post-frontal is a character of G. pumilus, and that the specimen received from Mr. Moore, of Liverpool, was no doubt one of a brood, in the possession of Lady Cust, which was born alive in November 1868, and on which Mr. Moore reported at the time (cf. Proc. Lit. & Phys. Soc. Liverp. xxiii. p. 49). Now, it is well known that C. vulgaris is oviparous, and the fact that C. pumilus is ovovivi-parous was recorded as early as 1825 (cf. Kaup, Isis, 1825 p. 592). |
