374 Zoological Society : — 



latter with black shafts, and the spatulate terminations of the two 

 centre feathers largely tipped with black ; lores and lengthened ear- 

 coverts black, the latter bounded above by a narrow line of blue ; 

 beneath the eye a narrow streak of greyish-white, bounded above by 

 a finer streak of blue ; under surface very pale green, becoming of a 

 still paler and more buify hue on the vent ; on the centre of the 

 breast a few lanceolate pendent feathers of a deep velvety black, 

 narrowly bordered with pale blue ; bill black ; feet brownish-black. 

 lY: Total length, 15|^ inches; bill, 2; wing, 5:^; tail, 8f ; tarsi, 1-|-. 

 01 iMab ., Guatemala. 

 doui { di'// 



On the Anatomy of the Great Anteater 



(Myrmecophaga jubata). 



By Professor Owen, F.R.S., V.P.Z.S. 



Professor Owen read a paper on the Anatomy of the Great Ant- 

 eater {Myrmecophaga jubata). The animal dissected was a full- 

 grown female ; it was received at the Gardens September 29, 1853, 

 and died July 6, 1854. It weighed 62 lbs. ; the weight of the brain 

 was 3 oz. avoir. The nipples were two in number, post-pectoral in 

 position ; the vulva and vent opened by a common cloaca! aperture. 

 The integument was thick ; well-developed dermal muscles attached 

 it to parts of the skeleton : the extent and attachments of these were 

 described. The position of the viscera on opening the abdominal 

 cavity was detailed. The intestinal canal is supported by one broad 

 fold of peritoneum, as in reptiles. A long narrow continuous gland 

 extends along the base line of the mesenteric part of the fold, and a 

 parallel series of detached glands along the mesocohc part. Other 

 modifications of the peritoneum were described in relation to the 

 support and connection of other viscera. The stomach consisted of 

 two parts, a cardiac or membranous, and a pyloric or muscular part. 

 The cardiac part is a subglobular cavity, measuring when distended 

 9 inches in its longest diameter, 7 inches in depth from the cardia, 

 to the left of which the cavity bulges about 4 inches. The circum- 

 ference of the cavity is 18 inches.- The pyloric part is 3 inches in 

 both longitudinal and vertical diameter, 2^ inches across ; its mus- 

 cular part is so thick that it may be called a gizzard : it has not how- 

 ever the thick callous epithelial lining of a true ornithic gizzard. 



The lining membrane of the stomach, as compared with that of the 

 oesophagus, becomes more vascular and is furnished with a thinner epi- 

 thelium at the cardiac orifice ; but the lining membrane for some 

 distance from that orifice, and between it and the entry to the gizzard, 

 is smoother and covered by a thicker layer of epithelium than in the 

 rest of the cardiac cavity, where the ordinary vascular villous gastric 

 surface prevails : the one modification passes insensibty into the other. 

 When fully distended, the cardiac cavity is smooth ; as it contracts, 

 the lining membrane falls into rugse, very minute and irregular near 

 the cardia, thicker and larger at the greater curvature, and assuming 

 a longitudinal direction as they approach and converge towards the 



