Dr Albrecht of Brussels has recently traversed the well-known and generally accepted theory originally advanced by Goethe, that in the alveolar form of cleft palate the fissure lies in the plane of the suture between the intermaxillary and superior maxillary bones, and has suggested, in substitution for this theory, that in the early embryo each intermaxilla is divided into an inner mesial bone (endognathion) and an outer lateral bone (mesognathion), and that the alveolar cleft is an open state of the suture intervening between these two divisions.