446 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1720. 



In sheep 6 excretory ducts are always found in each external maxillary 

 gland. 



In dogs and cats, &c. these ducts are fewer, in proportion to the smallness of 

 the glands. It is observable, that these ducts in dogs open obliquely towards 

 the mouth, by which the saliva may be better mixed with the food in 

 mastication. 



Dr. Wharton, cap. 21, first mentions the external maxillary glands. What 

 he says of them is applicable only to their appearance in human beings, where 

 they are of the conglobate kind, and very small, unless in scrophulous and 

 venereal cases. It is plain that he had not seen them in brutes ; for in his 

 figures, which were drawn from brutes, no notice is taken of these glands. He 

 describes them as very small, and calls them emunctories of the nerves, which 

 was the notion in his time concerning the use of the conglobate glands ; and 

 the saliva was said e nervoso genere profundi. 



Steno, (Obs. Anat. p. 14) justly blames Blasius for ascribing to the external 

 maxillaries an excretory duct opening into the mouth, like the common one 

 from the parotid gland. Yet Steno, otherwise very accurate, does not truly 

 describe these glands, nor distinguish them from the buccal, though they are as 

 distinct from the buccal, as the sublinguals are from the internal maxillaries. 

 Steno divides his buccal into 3 parts. The large ducts in a line rise from the 

 external maxillaries; and how distinct these glands are from the buccal appears 

 plainly in fig. 17, &c. 



The external maxillaries differ from the buccal in size, figure, structure, the 

 particular number of ducts, in colour, &c. The buccal, labial, internal maxil- 

 lary, and sublingual glands, are of a yellow colour; besides, the buccal are 

 separated from the external maxillaries by a strong membrane. Indeed many 

 of the excretory ducts of the buccal glands open near the ducts of the maxil- 

 laries, from whence Steno confounded these glands, but they do so round his 

 own ducts from the parotids; and some ducts from like glands open near the 

 sublinguals, as also about Nuck's ducts, in which places the buccal ducts are 

 most numerous. 



In short, there is a very great number of excretory ducts dispersed all over 

 the membrane that invests the mouth, fauces, &c. which rise from glands that 

 lie under this internal membrane. These glands are more numerous in some 

 parts than others, and receive different names, according to the part they 

 belong to, as labial, buccal, palatine, &c. But these are small glandules, with 

 one excretory duct, and though they separate saliva like the large conglomerate 

 glands, parotids, maxillaries, &c. yet they differ from these in constructure, 

 one common excretory duct, &c. Whereas the external maxillaries diff^er from 



