298 ON THE ANATOMY OF 



P. Z. S. 1882, My observations on the salivary glands agree well in most points with 

 p. 289. those of my predecessors, except as regards the number and openings of 

 the ducts to the submaxillary glands, regarding which very different 

 statements have been made at various times. Of these, Gervais's 

 description, as given in some remarks accompanying the exhibition before 

 the French Academy of Sciences of some models of these glands (C. It. 

 s. c.), agrees best with my observations. He says : " Deux paires des 

 canaux dont il s'agit viennent aboutir separement dans la bouche en se 

 rendant a deux poches situees aupres de la symphyse mentonniere ; la 

 troisi&me paire verse un peu en arriere, egalement dans une petite dilatation 

 terminate." 



A similar arrangement is described by J. Chatin in the genus 

 Tamandua*, except that he says that there are two openings on each side 

 at the symphysis. Pouchet, on the other hand, maintains (' Memoires ' 

 &c. pp. v and 88) that there are only two ducts on each side, one of these 

 being formed by the confluence of two of the three primary ducts coming 

 from the corresponding three lobes of which each gland is composed. 

 He only describes a single pair of openings close to the symphysis. 

 Owen, finally, describes the three ducts of each side as eventually uniting, 

 and opening, also by a single aperture, close to the symphysis. 



An examination, however, of his specimen (now preserved in the 

 Hunterian Museum, where, by the kind permission of Prof. Mower, I 

 was allowed to examine it) demonstrates the existence of a second pair 

 of apertures in the floor of the mouth situated some 2 inches behind the 

 first pair, which lie immediately behind the symphysis, in this respect 

 quite agreeing with Gervais's description, and with my own observations 

 on the second of my (fresh) specimens (vide Plate VIII. fig. 3 c). This 

 second pair of apertures, which lie close to each other on each side of the 

 median line and are very minute, are the openings of the deeper ducts, 

 which, one on each side, arise from the more anterior (cervical) portion of 

 the gland t. As these lie quite behind the other pair of apertures, any 

 injection passed into the latter can of course only fill the two pairs of 

 ducts (a, b) which debouch into them. This may easily explain, therefore, 

 Pouchet's only having found two ducts on each side, though it is possible 

 that individual specimens may vary in this respect. I must at least 

 notice that in the first specimen that passed through my hands (the 

 submaxillary ducts of which were injected from the anterior pair of 



* Ann. Sci. Nat. 5, (Zool.) xiii. art. no. 9. 



t Such was, at least, the condition in the only specimen of Myrmecophaga in which 

 these ducts had been satisfactorily injected examined by me. In Tamandua, according 

 to Chatin's figure (op. cit. pi. 14), it is the ducts from the posterior (sternal) part of the 

 gland that open here. This point requires reexamination, as also the number of aper- 

 tures anteriorly. 



