| OCR Text |
Show 148 PROF. G. B. HOWES O N JACOBSON'S [Feb. 17, is therefore interesting as invalidating such an interpretation, as the morphological significance attached by Albrecht to his specimen, the bifid limb of which, 1 have no doubt, was likewise produced by regeneration. Whether the case now noticed is one of reversion, as 1 have noticed in the scaling of the reproduced tails of Lizards, or merely comparable to the bifid or trifid tails of the same Reptiles, is a point on which I will refrain from expressing an opinion. Mr. Boulenger also exhibited young specimens and eggs of a South-African Siluroid fish, Galeichthys feliceps, which had been sent to him by Mr. J. M . Leslie, of Port Elizabeth, with the information that the ova had been obtained from the mouth of the adult fish. The fact that in the genera Arius and Osteogeniosus the male takes charge of the eggs in this manner was well known, but Mr. Leslie's observation was of importance as adding a third, though closely allied, genus to the list of the Siluroids which thus protect their offspring. According to Mr. Leslie, the number of eggs in one fish's mouth was about thirty, each of which measures about six lines in diameter. The following papers were read :- 1. On the Probable Existence of a Jacobson's Organ among the Crocodilia ; with Observations upon the Skeleton of that Organ in the Mammalia, and upon the Basi-Man-dibular Elements in the Vertebrata. By G. B. HOAVES, F.Z.S., F.L.S., Assistant Professor of Zoology, Royal College of Science, London. [Eeceived February 17, 1891.] (Plate XIV.) I. The Black Caiman (Caiman niger), of Inter-Tropical America, is, with the exception of Tomistoma, the only Emydosaurian living in which the vomers are freely intercalated between the bones of the palato-maxillary series. In Tomistoma they are so disposed as to be visible from beneath over a short and constricted area between the posterior ends of the palatines, as was first shown by Miiller and Schlegel'. In Caiman niger they are, unlike those of all other Crocodilia, prolonged forwards into the premaxillo-maxillary region, and their inflated free ends (vo.'", Plate XIV. fig. 7) occupy a wide inter- 1 Cf. Huxley, Journ. Linn. Soc. Lond., Zool. vol. iv. pp. 17,19 (1860). synonymy see Boulenger's Brit. Mus. Cat. of Cheloniane, Ebynchocephalians, and Crocodiles, 1889, p. 276. |
