1870.] ANATOMY OF THE PRONGBUCK. 345 
The mouth is sparingly lined with flat moderate-sized papille as 
in the Sheep. The faucial membrane is well supplied with mucus- 
glands. The tonsils, enclosed in a chamber, are each about the size 
of a pea, and open, as in the Giraffe, by a single wide fossa in the 
recess on either side behind the faucial pillars, and very slightly in 
advance of the tip of the epiglottis. 
The uvula descends slightly, and is continuous laterally with a 
raised musculo-membranous ring guarding the pharyngeal opening; so 
that when the parts are in natural position an approach is discernible 
to that remarkable sphincter grasping of the cetacean larynx; only, 
of course, in the Prongbuck the epiglottis and arytenoids are quite 
diminutive. The pharyngeal constrictors are of moderate thickness, 
but nevertheless well marked. 
Anteriorly the tongue, more Antelope- or Goat- than Deer-like, 
has a greyish hue—but beneath is of a dull leaden tinge, darker at 
the sides of the root or where the whitish papilla are shortest and 
sparsest. It is spatular in figure, slightly narrowest about the 
middle, and thins very much at the broadly rounded apex. Length 
63 inches, and from 1} to 13 inch in breadth: the free portion be- 
yond the frenum under ordinary conditions measures 2 inches. 
Fully more than the anterior half of the dorsum is so crowded with 
short flattened cuspidate retrocumbent or filiform papille (7) as to 
simulate the pile of velvet ; these increase in size in the middle line 
behind and towards the prominent part of the root, where they form 
a crescent-shaped patch, the horns directed backwards. Posteriorly 
the papillz gradate into flattened elevations. The patch above 
mentioned forms a prominent feature in the tongue of both the Ox 
and Sheep. 
A long strip of separate papillee circumvallatee (c), some forty or 
more in number, are found on each lateral aspect of the dorsum, abreast 
of the papillary patch already spoken of, and behind to the very root. 
Each is glandular, of a black colour, depressed centrally, and sur- 
rounded by a deep fossa. The representatives of fungiform papillze 
(fg) appear as black dots scattered over the entire dorsum, with the 
exception of the root. As Prof. Owen* describes in the Giraffe, these 
obtuse papillz: appear ‘‘ somewhat sparingly scattered as coarse grains 
of gunpowder ;”’ only they are necessarily smaller in the Prongbuck. 
The larynx does not present any striking external feature such as 
the great thyroid enlargement of Antelope gutturosat and Hyomos- 
chus aquaticust, nor internal peculiarity of the subepiglottidean 
pouching met with in Gazella dorcas§ and Tarandus rangifer. 
Indeed, so far as general construction is concerned, it might equally 
belong to either the Cervide or Bovide. 
The sketch C, fig. 3, enables the upper view of the parts to be un- 
derstood. The epiglottis (Zp) is a broad, almost crescent-shaped leaf- 
let, the apex, however, being slightly acuminate. In natural position 
Trans. Zool. Soe. vol. ii. p. 224. 
Vid. Pallas, Spic. Zool. tab. iii. fig. 16. 
Flower, P. Z.S. 1867, p. 956. 
Meckel, Anat. Comp. x. p. 604. 
t+ + * 
