1865. ] OF DESMODUS RUFUS. 387 
tary on the last proposition, Duvernoy adds (J. c. p. 32) that the 
stomach of the blood-suckers is “ more or less straight and elongated, 
approaching in form and structure that of the Carnivora ;” while at 
page 33 he writes :— 
“In the Phyllostomes the stomach presents two principal forms. 
The group with bilobed median incisors has it elongated, without 
any pyloric cecum, but with a very long tubular pyloric part, the - 
pylorus and the cardia being situated at the apex and the base of a 
long recurved cone. This elongated form, which recalls that of the 
most voracious Carnivora, is also seen in a species with median, 
simple, anomalous incisors. In the Vampyre (V. spectrum) the 
stomach is larger and approaches a rounded form, having the py- 
lorus and the cardia closely approximated, though there is a short 
tubular pyloric portion. In two species of Phyllostomes, with simple 
median incisors, the stomach is altogether globular, with the two 
orifices approximated, and the czeca lost in the common cavity.” 
I find that Desmodus rufus presents a fourth kind of stomach, 
which is not only different from all these, but is unlike any form of 
that organ which has hitherto been observed in the mammalian 
series. 
The gullet (a) is exceedingly narrow, and opens into a transversely 
elongated tube (Py), which passes on the right side into the intes- 
tine (J, [,I). ‘The duodenum and the stomach are not outwardly 
separated by any pyloric constriction ; but as the gall-duct (2) is in- 
serted at a distance of not more than 0-2 inch from the cesophageal 
aperture, it is clear that the pyloric division of the stomach is ex- 
ceedingly abbreviated. 
The cardiac division, on the other hand, is enormously elongated, 
forming a vast caecum, sharply bent upon itself, and several inches 
in length (Ca, Cd). At first this cecum is not wider than that 
part of the stomach into which the cesophagus opens; but before it 
bends upon itself it has fully twice that diameter, and the recurved 
portion remains wide throughout, dilating, somewhat suddenly, to- 
wards its ceecal end, and then slightly narrowing again to its termi- 
nation. 
In one specimen which I examined, the body of the Desmodus, 
from the snout to the end of the coccyx, measured 3:2 inches in 
length; and the intestine, from the pylorus to the anus, was 11 
inches long; while the gastric ceecum, straightened out, measured 
6:5 inches in length, so that this remarkable diverticulum of the 
stomach was twice as long as the body, and nearly two-thirds as long 
as the intestine. 
In the ‘ Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle,’ Mr. Waterhouse, 
in concluding his description of a species of Desmodus (D. @ orbignyi), 
remarks— 
‘Tt is desirable perhaps to separate the blood-sucking Bats from 
the insectivorous species, and place them between the latter group 
and the Pteropina (with which they agree in the large size of the 
thumb and the rudimentary interfemoral membrane) under a sec- 
tional name, which I propose to call Hamatophilini.” 
