This memoir contains a detailed description, with illustrations, of the intracranial blood-vessels of the Tuatara, of which no account has hitherto been published. The description is belived to be more complete than any hithero given for any reptile, and a considerable number of vessels are described which have not hithero been noted in Lacertilia. This comparative completeness of detail is largely due to the employment of a special method of investigation. By this method the entire contents of the cranial cavity are fixed and hardened
in situ
, and are then in excellent condition either for dissection or for histological purposes. The brain does not occupy nearly the whole of the cranial cavity, there being a very large subdural space (especially above the brain), across which many of the blood-vessels run, together with delicate strands of connective tissue which connect the dura mater with pia. The eyeballs are removed and an incision is made on each side in the cartilaginous wall which separates the cranial cavity from the orbit. Acetic bichromate of potash (made up according to the formula given by Bolles Lee) is injected in to the cranial cavity through these incision, and the entire animal, after opening the body cavity, is suspended in a large volume of the same fluid for about five days, and then graded up to 70 per cent. Alcohol. When the cranial cavity is now opened up the cerebral vessels are seen with extraordinary distinctness, although they have not been artifically injected. Futher details were made out by means of serial sections, both transverse and longitudinal, and both of the adult and of advanced embroyes (Stage S). In most respect the arrangement of the intracranical blood-vessels agrees with found in the Lacertilia, so far as these have been investigated, but there is an important difference in the fact that the posterior cephalic vein leaves the cranial cavity through the foramen jugulare and not through the foramen magnum, while a slightly more primitive condition is shown in the less complete union of the right and left halves of the basilar artery.
Sphenodon
makes some approach to the condition of the
Chelonia
in this latter respect, but differs conspicuously from this group in the fact that the circle of Willis is not completed anteriorly, as well as in the fact that no branch of the posterior cephalic vein leaves the cranial cavity through the foreman magnum. A very characteristic features of
Sphenodon
is the development of large transverse sinues resembling those of the crocodile, but these communicate with the extracranial vascular system in quite a different manner from that described by Rathke in the latter animal.
X. The intracranial vascular system of
sphenodon
