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II. The Bakerian Lecture.―On the structure and development of the skull in the Salmon (Salmo Salar, L.)

1873; Royal Society; Volume: 163; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rstl.1873.0003

2053-9223

William Kitchen Parker,

Fish biology, ecology, and behavior

At the close of my last communication, on the Frog’s Skull, I promised to bring forward a paper on that of the Salmon; indeed the present paper should have appeared next after my memoir on the Skull of the Fowl (see Phil. Trans. 1869, p. 804); but the invaluable labours of my friend Professor Huxley on the “face” of the Vertebrata (see Proc. Zool. Soc. 1869, pp. 391—407) deflected me for the time, and I was led to labour at the Amphibia. This new subject has been fraught with as much pleasure as the one before it; for although the Salmon begins as a higher type and ends as a lower than the Frog, yet it also undergoes no little metamorphosis, and its transformations are not a whit less instructive than those of the Frog. Moreover, let this be said in praise of this fish, that its eggs and its fry are the most exquisite objects the morphological observer can ever hope to spend his time upon—their size and their diaphanous character making them excellent subjects for section, dissection, and viewing under any and every degree of magnifying-power. As to the source of these specimens, it is due to the donors that their names should be mentioned here; they are my friends Messrs. B. Waterhouse Hawkins, Frank Buckland, and Henry Lee, who have most kindly put every valuable specimen into my hands that I have desired, not only for this paper, but for others completed, in hand, or in prospect. Cuvier must be taken as the great pioneer in this branch of Ichthyotomy; many of his determinations are excellent, yet, from his not having worked out the development of the Fish, several of his terms are not defensible.