1877.] MR. GARROD ON A GALL-BLADDER IN PARROTS. 793 



dark on section being made in the cortical portions, and quite white 

 at the ajiiees of the cones. 



It is the lieart which was peculiar, in that neither the ductus 

 arteriosus nor the foramen ovale were obliterated, and they appeared 

 to be as patent as they could ever have been in foetal life. The 

 question then suggests itself as to whether the animal suffered from 

 cyanosis, of which it died, or whether in the Pinnipedia the semi- 

 fcetal circulation continues for longer after birth than in other 

 mammals. 



The creature having lived for nine days in the Society's Gardens, 

 and having lost the umbilical rudiment a day before it arrived, was 

 probably about a fortnight old when it died, and ought, according to 

 analogy with the human infant, to have lost all traces of the foetal 

 cardiac peculiarities ; whereas the ductus arteriosus and the foramen 

 ovale were not even beginning to be obliterated. This can hardly 

 have been otherwise than patbological, which leads me to the infer- 

 ence that it died morbidly cyanotic, perhaps because it lacked its 

 normal maternal milk, and so was not in a condition to repair its 

 foetal imperfections. 



8. Note on the Absence or Presence of a Gall-bladder in the 

 family o£ the Parrots. By A. H. Garrod, M.A., F.R.S., 

 Prosector to the Society. 



[Eeceived October 17, 1877.] 



In a former communication ^ I had the opportunity of showing 

 that the generalization, founded upon the dissection of an insufficient 

 number of genera, that the gall-bladder is wanting in the Columbae, 

 does not apply to Carpophaga, Lopholamus, or Ptilonopus. On 

 the present occasion I have to correct a similar error with reference 

 to the Psittaci, because I have found a well-developed gall-bladder 

 in specimens of Cacatua philippinarum, C'acatua goffini, Cacatua 

 moluccensis, and Calopsitta novcB-hollandice, in which last-named 

 species it is small and easily overlooked. 



In my earlier dissections I have not recorded the presence of a 

 gall-bladder in any species of Parrot. That, no doubt, is because, it 

 being absent in so many, I did not expect to find it. 



From the above facts it is highly probable that the presence of a 

 gall-bladder in the Cacatuinae will have to be included among the 

 characteristic peculiarities of this subfamily. At the same time 

 its persistence in them is in favour of the view that the Palseorni- 

 thinae, as restricted by me'-, are but little different from the ancestral 

 Parrots, and the Cacatuinae still less so. The primitive Parrots must 

 have possessed a gall-bladdder — because we now know that this 

 organ is present in the Cacatuinae, and consequently was not absent 

 in the primitive species, as the probability that it should have been 

 independently developed a second time is infinitely httle. 



' P. Z. S. 1874, p. 257. = P. Z. S. 1874, p. 594. 



