398 FREDERIC T. LEWIS 



case the entire ventral pancreas has grown around the duodenum 

 to the left. Fortunately she has published excellent figures of 

 the ducts, which show clearly the embryonic relations, since there 

 is no anastomosis between the ducts of the dorsal and ventral 

 pancreases. The duct of the ventral pancreas is seen to bifurcate. 

 Its right branch, soon subdivided, corresponds to the normal 

 right lobe. Its long left branch, which has led to the anomaly, 

 corresponds closely to the left lobe which we have described in 

 the pig embryo (figs. 7 and 8). It is perhaps more like one of 

 the pig embryos not figured, in which the right lobe is rudimen- 

 tary and the median stem appears' continuous with the left lobe. 



Lecco, who studied the annular pancreas in the adult and 

 sought in human embryos for an explanation of the anomaly, 

 justly criticizes Miss Cords 's work as follows: 



''A glance at the familiar figures in Keibel and Elze's Normen- 

 tafel, as well as the examination of the embryos placed at my 

 disposal, shows what a great distance separates the two pancreases, 

 making a fusion of the two, ventral to the duodenum, seem 

 highly improbable." 



He adds that in Baldwin's paper he finds no evidence for either 

 of the explanations proposed by Baldwin (cited above). The 

 evidence, indeed, can be found only in abnormal embryos having 

 annular pancreases in process of development. Baldwin appar- 

 ently did not examine embryos, and Lecco studied only normal 

 ones; but in certain of the pig embryos described above, the 

 anomaly is almost complete, and it is due to a left lobe of the 

 ventral pancreas. 



