AND THEIE FUNCTIONS. 



125 



playing with knuckle-bones, from Cyrenaica, and a beautiful 

 group of astragalizontes (D 161), from Italy, while among 

 the marble statues are a female player (1710) and two boys 

 quarrelling over a game (1756), both found in Eome. Refer- 

 ences are made, both by ancient and modern writers, to the 

 use of golden astragali by the Ancients, but I have not been 

 able to obtain any reliable information about the discovery 

 of any of these in modern times. To-day the use of 

 knuckle-bones for divination or dice-playing is almost uni- 

 versal, being found among widely different peoples, such as 

 the Barotse in South Africa, the Baloches, and the American 

 Indians. 



The bones dealt with so far are of quite an ordinary and 

 well-known kind ; it is proposed to deal next with two kinds 



FIG 7. 



BONES FROM THE HEART OF A 3-YEAR OLD OX. 



which are not commonly known, viz., the bones of the 

 hearts of some animals, and the os penis found in the 

 weasel and some other animals. 



In H. A. ii. c. 11, s. 3, and P. A. iii. c. 4, 6666, it is 

 stated that in horses and a certain kind of ox a bone is 

 found in the heart and serves as a support. In oxen, a long 

 curved bone is embedded circumferentially in the very root 

 of the aorta and in the auricular end of the partition 

 between the ventricles, and a much smaller bone, of tri- 

 angular shape, is found in that part of the root of the aorta 

 which is diametrically opposite to the large bone. Fig. 7 

 (which is twice the natural size) shows these bones, in side 

 elevation, taken from the heart of a three-year old ox. 



