KIDNEYS OF REPTILES. 



541 



The fatty appendages which are attached to the kidneys or 

 urinary bladder in Batrachia, Ophidia, and Lacertilia, attain a 

 remarkable size in some members of the latter order ; in the 

 Iguana tuberculata they are attached by a narrow process to the 

 sides of the bladder, near its neck. 1 



In the Chelonia the kidneys present a more compact form, 

 and their surface is convoluted through the disposition of the 

 component lobes. They have the same low pelvic position as 

 in Lizards, but are smaller in proportion, and are outside the 

 peritoneum. In the Tortoise ( Testudo tabidata) they are oblong, 

 broad, thick, subtrihedral bodies : in the Turtle ( Chelone mydas) 

 they are flattened anteriorly, or towards the abdominal cavity, 

 convex where they rest upon 

 the dorsal wall. In Emys, 

 figs. 307 and 359, o, they are 

 semioval. The tubuli urini- 

 feri pass to the superficies of 

 the lobules and there form the 

 branches of the ureter, which 

 unite towards the mesial border 

 with the beginning of the main 

 duct, ib. N ; this is short, and 

 terminates, with the spermduct, 

 C, in the male, in the uroge- 

 nital cavity at F. The rectal 

 orifice intervenes between this 

 and the wide opening of the urinary bladder, ib. M, m". This 

 receptacle is proportionally smallest in the marine Chelonia 

 ( Chelone, Trionyx) : in its contracted state it presents, in Chelone 

 mydas, thick muscular parietes and a corrugated internal surface. 

 In terrestrial and fresh-water Chelonia the bladder is relatively 

 much larger, and with thinner walls. In many it is bifid. In 

 Emydians, besides the ordinary bladder, fig. 304, u, a pair of 

 other bladders, ib. u', u", communicate by wide orifices, behind 

 the ureters, with the cloaca (p. 447). 



In the Crocodilia the kidneys are of an oblong oval form ; the 

 forepart is thickest or largest, and is sternad of the psoas muscle, 

 the hind part extends into the side of the pelvis ; they are in 

 contact with each other at the mid-line. The surface is convo- 

 luted, like the brain, but with smaller and more numerous gyrrc ; 

 the colour of the kidney is usually a deep brown. The ureters 

 terminate in low papilla), in the urogenital compartment of the 



1 xx. vol. iii. p. 221, prep. no. 1820 a. 



Male organs of generation, and kidney of Emys 

 europaa. xxxviii. 



