476 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [May, 



OBSERVATIONS ON HYRAX. 



BY HENRY C. CHAPMAN, M.D. 



The structure of Hyrax has been so thoroughly investigated by Pal- 

 las/ Owen,2 Brandt,^ Mirie and Mivart/ and George,^ as well as by other 

 anatomists, that little or nothing remains now to be said by any one 

 to whom the rare opportunity is afforded of dissecting this interesting 

 animal. In exhibiting to the Academy the muscular system and viscera 

 of a fine male specimen of Hyrax {Procavia Brucei), most kindly put at 

 the disposition of the writer by Messiem-s Edmond, Perrier and Gervais, 

 of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, attention was nevertheless called to 

 the fact that the figures illustrating the form of stomach as offered 

 by Pallas, Brandt and George give an imperfect, even an erroneous, 

 idea of that of the stomach of the Hyrax dissected by the writer. 

 According to the anatomists just referred to, the cardiac portion of 



the stomach in Hyrax is large and 

 globular, the pyloric portion small and 

 narrow, whereas exactly the reverse 

 obtains in the stomach of the specimen 

 submitted to the writer (fig. 1). In- 

 ^ Xy'/v I asmuch as the narrow cardiac portion 



' ' ^ of the stomach is extremely muscular 



in Hyrax, it might be supposed that 

 such condition may have been due 

 to the fluid m which the speci- 

 men had been preserved. In the 

 Fig. 1. judgment of the writer the marked 



difference in contour presented by the two regions of the stomach 

 cannot be so accounted for. In confirmation of the view that the 

 form of the stomach so found was normal and not due to post-mortem 



^ Spicilegia Zoologica, 1767, p. 16. 

 2 Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1832, p. 202. 



' Memoires de I Acad. Imp. des Sciences de St. Pcterbourg, VII Ser., Tome 

 XIV. 



< Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1865, p. 329. 



' Annates des Sciences Nat., 6me Serie, I, 1874. 



