Lect. VII.] NASAL LABYRINTH OF THE TENREC. 169 



smell are distriljuted. These scrolls in us are divided 

 into the upper niid middle turljinated Ijoiies ; in front and 

 l)elow we have the maxillary or inferior turhinal, whose 

 nervous sup})ly is from the first or ophthalmic Ijranch of 

 the fifth nerve — the trigeminal — the nerve which su})- 

 p)lies most of the upper and lower face, and this first 

 branch is that nerve which sets up sneezing. Under the 

 median har or thick base of the septum nasi or 

 partition wall of the nose-passages, we have a vomer or 

 ploughshare bone, large and long in proportion to 

 the great intertrabecular beam which it undersj)lices. 

 There are also other little vomers, two in front protect- 

 ing Jacobson's organs, and two Ijehind, tying the legs of 

 tlie main vomer to the turljinal masses, as in the Hedge- 

 hog. But that which, to me, is wholly unique, and 

 morphologically inexplicable, at present, is the subdivi- 

 sion, by superficial peeling, of the main or middle 

 vomer. 



I have examined vomers of all sorts and sizes, in types 

 varying from a Sturgeon to a Man ; but this harki7ig, as 

 it may l3e called, of the median piece is to me something 

 new. In the nearly rij^e embryo of the Tenrec the bone is 

 relatively very large, and is becoming rough, cracked, and 

 cellular; l)ut in young from the nest, about the size of 

 Field Mice, the lower surface of the bone has split itself, 

 like the l^ark of the plane-tree, into secondary flakes. 

 There are two of these superficial centres of ossification, 

 one before the other, and they sheath the inner and main 



