450 



ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



slender prolongation along the right side, into the apex of which 

 the postcaval vein enters. It has a narrow ' falciform ' ligament. 



In the Crocodile the liver is divided into a right and left lobe, 

 anteriorly, by the heart, which almost wholly enters the fissure. 

 The right lobe is the largest, with the gall-bladder on its concave 

 side. The liver is more equally divided in Chelonia, fig. 304, I, I, 

 and chiefly also by the heart, ib. a', b'. The stomach, ib. k, 

 deeply impresses the left lobe, and is buried in it in some species 

 (Emys serrata). In many there is a process, like the ' lobulus 

 Spigelii,' entering the curve of the stomach. In the higher 

 Reptiles the liver is contained in a peritoneal pouch ; in Chelonia 

 and Crocodilia each lobe has its pouch more or less distinct. In 

 the Crocodile the capsule becomes aponeurotic, whence it is con- 

 tinued from the sterno-sacral border of the gland to the abdominal 

 parietes, to be connected, like a diaphragm, with the transversus 

 abdominis muscle. 1 



The lobes of the liver are subdivided into numerous and minute 

 lobules, compactly united by interlobular cellular tissue. The 

 lobules themselves are composed of corpuscles, or ' acini,' occupy- 

 ing the meshes of the vascular network pervading the lobule ; 

 these ' acini ' are larger in Reptiles than in Fishes. Their 

 secretion finds its way into biliary canals, distinguishable as 

 such, with proper walls, on the exterior of the lobule ; these 

 ducts anastomose in the interlobular spaces, and form larger 

 canals, accompanying the hepatic vessels^ and, after repeated 

 unions, issuing, as the ' hepatic ducts,' from the portal fissure. 

 The walls of the ducts have no follicular glandules. The hepatic 

 tissue in Reptiles is usually softer than in warm-blooded Verte- 



1 Br. Jones, ccxlv. p. 113, ascertained the weight of the body and of the liver in the 

 following JReptilia, and gives the relative weight of the latter in the subjoined form. 



