NOVITATES ZOOLOGICAE. 



Vol. VIII. JULY, 1901. No. 2. 



SOME NOTES UPON THE BRAIN AND OTHER 

 STRUCTURES OE CENTETES. 



By frank E. BEDDARD, M.A., F.B.S. 



(Plate VIII.). 



THROUGH the kinduess of the Hon. Walter Rothschild, M.P., D.Sc, I have 

 had the opportunity of examiuing several point.s in the anatomy of two 

 examples of Centetes ecaiulatus belonging to him, which died recently in the 

 Zoological Society's Gardens. As may well be imagined, I have not a great 

 deal to add to the nearly exhaustive account given by the late Dr. Dobson in 

 bis Monograph of the InsecHvora* and indeed I have refrained from troubling 

 myself to confirm his careful details of the myology of this insectivore, and from 

 examining in more than a cursory fashion the other organs and systems with which 

 he deals in that memoir. There are, however, a few points with which Dr. Dobson 

 was not able to deal ; and to these points I have directed my attention in one or 

 other or in both of the two specimens which I have examined. The principal 

 lacuna in Dr. Dobson's descrijition concerns the brain ; of this organ in the genus 

 Centetes there appears to be no account. As it presents several features of interest, 

 and as I had at my disposal a very well preserved brain, I have thought it worth 

 while to direct attention to the principal facts in the cerebral anatomy of the 

 genus. One or two other points in the visceral anatomy and osteology of Centetes 

 I shall call attention to after dealing with — 



The Brain. 



The measurements of the brain, after preservation in alcohol, were as follows : 

 Extreme length, 28 mm. ; length of olfactory bulbs, 7 mm. ; length of hemispheres, 

 IT) mm. ; length of the same along the median aiiposed faces, 10 mm. ; greatest 

 breadth of hemispheres, 16 mm. 



The olfactory lobes are therefore enormously large, even for an Insectivore, 

 in which group they are generally excessively long as compared to many other 

 groups of mammals. They are in the present genus exactly one-fourth of the 

 total length of the brain, measured to the end of the cerebellum. 



The total length of the brain presents some matter for consideration not 

 without interest if its length be compared with that of the skull. The extreme 

 length of the skull from which the brain was extracted — of the dried skull, that 



* G. E. DobsoD, A Alo/icgyajih of thi- InM-ctirora, Systematic and Anatomical. London : Van Voorst, 

 1883. 



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