VIII. Note on the Viscera of Tarsipes. 
By Professor D’Arcy W. THompson. 
My friend, Dr Lecue of Stockholm, told me recently that he had collected a number 
of specimens of this rare Marsupial, in order to study its anatomy in detail; and, 
accordingly, we gave up the attempt to dissect fully our single, somewhat ill- 
preserved specimen. Nevertheless, one or two organs of which we have made 
preparations may in the meantime be figured here, especially as one of them, the 
stomach, is very peculiar. 
The stomach of Tarsipes is quite unlike that of any other Marsupial. It is a 
compound stomach, with two main divisions, and certain small diverticula. The 
narrow cesophagus enters a globular chamber, into which opens the pylorus also. 
Nearly opposite to the pyloric valve, below and a little ventral to the cesophageal 
orifice, a short tubular passage, in width about equal to the duodenum, leads to 
another chamber somewhat larger than the first, which in our specimen was filled 
with a mass of honey and pollen-grains. To the left side of the second paunch-like 
chamber is applied the spleen, which, as is usually the case in Marsupials, is small 
and trilobed. From this chamber project three short czecal pouches, of which two 
are anterior, close to the anterior extremity of the spleen, and one is placed more 
posteriorly on the left side. 
Fig. 1. Stomacu or TarstPEs (x 3). 
by SP: oe., cesophagus; du., duodenum; sp., spleen. 
This stomach shows as it were an exaggeration of the tendency to form a 
cardiac prolongation, found in so many Marsupials as well as in other families. 
Such an elongated fundus occurs in Phascogale, Antechinomys,* &c., among the 
Dasyuride, and still more markedly, as is well known, in Macropus and Hal- 
maturus. Were the immensely elongated cardiac end of the stomach in Hal- 
maturus to become constricted close to the cesophagus, it would lead to a kind of 
stomach not unlike that here described in Tarsipes. Unfortunately, we possess 
very little information concerning the stomach in the many genera of the smaller 
Phalangistide ; but in some at any rate, eg., Belideus, a cardiac prolongation, 
* Atston. P.Z.S., 1880, p. 458. 
