196 DR. R. W. SHUFELDT ON [Apr. 1, 



The Gall-bladder is of a pear-shaped form and of compara- 

 tively large size. Its position has already been given above. Its 

 own duct (cT/stic) passes down to the duodenum, being joined in 

 mid-course by a bihary duct coming from the right lobe of the liver. 

 Smaller ducts pass from it to enter the right hepatic lobe just men- 

 tioned, while upon its surface several minor branches seem to anasto- 

 mose with each other. In addition to all these we make out an 

 hepatic duct proper; this issues also from the rij;ht lobe of the liver, 

 and passing down joins at mid-course the pancreatic duct. A 

 branch joins also this hepatic duct with the gall-biadder. It was a 

 long time before I could bring myself to believe that these several 

 branching ducts were not anastomosing vessels borne in the peri- 

 toneum overlying the parts under consideration. I am now, 

 however, fairly well satisfied, after the most careful examination 

 that I could make, that the arrangement is as I have given it. 



According to Beddard a somewhat similar condition of affairs is 

 to be found in Varanus salvator (P. Z. S. 1888, p. 105, fig. 4). 

 The structure is one that requires and will repay more extended and 

 careful research, and to this end I should very much like to examine 

 large living specimens of Heloderma, and if possible compare them 

 with more specimens of Varanus salvator. 



The Pancreas. — This organ is of proportionately good size in the 

 reptile before us, and it is to be sought, as usual, in the loop of the 

 duodenum. From its ventral aspect there arises an elongated 

 papilla, and it is at the extremity of this that there enters the 

 single hepatic duct formed bv the two smaller ones which emerge 

 from the sulcus in the right lobe of the liver ; while lower down one 

 of these latter appears to send a branch to the duodenum. For its 

 middle third, one of these ducts exhibits a peculiar reddish enlarge- 

 ment, of no great size ; I am at a loss to know whether this be 

 normal or not. This enlargement is strung along on the duct for a 

 distance of a centimetre or more, and has the appearance of a very 

 narrow elongated gland through which the duct must pass before 

 arriving at the pancreatic gland. From the apex of the pancreas 

 the common duct, here very short, enters the gut. 



Peculiar as this arrangement of the cystic, hepatic, pancreatic, and 

 common ducts in Heloderma is, it is not without parallel among 

 Vertebrates, for the arrangement is simulated in the Frog, where, too, 

 a system of branching hepatic ducts coming from the liver unite to 

 form a single duct that passes into the substance of the pancreas, 

 where it eventually unites with the common bile-duct on its way to 

 the duodenum \ 



In Heloderma the hepatic veins emerge from the liver at its 

 anterior part and soon enter the postcaval vein, as the latter passes 

 forwards to the right side of the heart. 



^ For a good drawing of these structures in (he Frog, see Wiedersheim's 

 ' Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates,' translated by W. Newton Parker, 1886, 

 p. 241, fig. 1U7. Compare also what Sir Richard Owen has to say upon this 

 point in Ills ' Ccuiparalive Anatomy and Phvsiology of Vertebrates,' vol. i. 

 pp. 448-454. 

 [50J 



