566 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 682-3. 



e, e, e,) ; that so by impeding a too quick descent of it this way, or by valves, 

 a separation may the better be made; and then the faeces, as useless, cannot 

 quicker be discharged than by the rectum ; which where the faeces are hard, is 

 furnished with a stronger muscle the better to help its action; and such seemed 

 the rectum here; and the fasces harder than usual in vipers. 



So that the whole ductus alimentalis, from its uses, may ordinarily be divided 

 into 4 parts. 1. That which conveys the food, the oesophagus. 2. That which 

 digests or corrodes it, the stomach. 3. That which distributes the chyle, the 

 intestines, 4. That which empties the faeces, the rectum. But a leech is all 

 stomach, from one end to the other, and devours at a meal several times the 

 weight of its whole body : the stomach when swelled and stretched with blood 

 is far bigger than the leech itself; nay, several times exceeds it. But I mistook 

 the number, it was not one, but many stomachs ; for the cavity is divided by 

 several transverse membranes, into divers distinct cameras; but these membranes 

 in the middle have a hole that leads from one into the other: but by the pouch- 

 ing out of each side, each of these may be reckoned also two ; in all we may 

 number, (there being 10 or 11 of these cameras, besides those 2 long ones 

 which at last run to the tail) at least 22, if not 24 stomachs, but the rectum which 

 lies between the forking of the 2 last long sacculi, or stomachs, is but small, and 

 short in respect of the whole; but of this perhaps more in my anatomy of this 

 animal. 



The heart, (fig. 1. k,) was placed near the bottom of the trachea, on the right 

 side of it. The length of it was l-i- inch, its figure rather flat than round; en- 

 compassed with a pericardium, and the auricle (1) larger than the heart itself. 

 It had but one ventricle, the valves small, and fleshy : and the inside of the 

 ventricle distinguished by 4 or 5 cross furrows. Why Charas should make the 

 heart of the viper to have two ventricles, I see no reason ; I should much more 

 easily allow a double auricle, one at the entrance of the vena cava, of which 

 there are two branches (n, n, n,) descending and one ascending ; the other for 

 the arteria aorta, which has two ascending and one descending branch (m, m, m,) 

 as in the figure. 



A little below the heart lies the liver (o, o.) ; which was about an inch wide 

 in the largest place, and seemed divided on one side by the vena cava into two 

 lobes of an unequal length ; for that on the left side was about 10 inches, and 

 that on the right side about a foot long; its colour a brown red, and its use no 

 doubt for the separating the gall that was contained in a bladder (p) seated at 

 some distance below. The gall-bladder here was 2 inches long, the colour of 

 the gall contained in it a grass-green, which sweating through its coats had deeply 

 tinged all the adjacent parts. The ductus cysticus, by which it empties itself 



