48 IXTESTINE AXD DIET OF REPTILES. 



zards, for iustance C)ie)mdoj}hon(s murinus ^nå Lacerfa ffallofi. 

 In siich cases it is of course important that the food wbich has 

 passed through the (somewhat lengthened) small intestine can be 

 retained for some tinie in the colon so that everything that 

 is available may be taken care of and absorbed. A well 

 developed ccecum may therefore be an nseful organ for an 

 omnivorons lizard. The long ccecnui of Tit2Jina»ihis tegnixin 

 may therefore be attributed to the vegetable part of its diet. 



True herbivorous animals have special adaptations for 

 such a diet in their iutestinal canal nsually in the shape of 

 reservoirs of some kind in which the food may be retained 

 for a comparatively great length of time and in which the 

 otherwise indigestible cellulose in the foodmaterial may be- 

 come decomposed and than available. The enormously wide- 

 ned eoecocoKc säck of Uromastix represents such a laboratory 

 where with the aid of bacteria fermentation and decomposi- 

 tion of cellulose and coarse fibre takes place. Still better 

 adaptations for this kind of a diet are shown by the herbi- 

 vorous Iguanids in their with a complicated valvular appa- 

 ratus provided and greatly enlarged large intestine.^ 



It has been stat ed that Amhhjrhynchus although quite 

 closely related to the herbivorous Iguanids showed some im- 

 portant differeuces with regard to the structure of its in- 

 testine and it has also in the descriptive part of this paper 

 been hinted that this difference is due to the different (algi- 

 vorous) diet of this animal. For the purpose of getting at 

 a better understanding of this I asked my friend Professor 

 C. Th. Mörner to make an analysis of some algse I gave 

 him and to investigate how much cellulose they contained 

 and at the same time to lind ont what this cellulose was 

 like. Judging from the contents of the intestine of Amhly- 

 rhynchus compared with those of Conoloplnis f. i. I supposed 

 that the algee should be chemically ditferent from terrestrial 

 plants. The algee furnished as examples were Fucus vesicu- 

 losHS and FnrceUaria fastigiafa, thus two iutentionally chosen 

 very coarse representatives of brown and red algre. Professor 

 Mörner now informs me that Fucus contained 7,: perceut 



^ The function of this modified coecocolic tract in the herbivorous li- 

 zards is thus to be compared with the one of the coecum and large intestine 

 of herbivorous mammals as Ellexberger has demonstrated for the horse, 

 Tullberg on a broader base generalized for the rodents, and I found andre- 

 c 'rded in diprotodont marsupials. 



