MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 535 



Most fortunately for the man it was on this horny surface that the tooth had 

 struck, and this, together with the promptness with which the snake was 

 snatched away, no doubt saved the man's life. There was considerable 

 tenderness of the spot to the touch when I examined it. The man complained 

 of not seeing properly, also of drowsiness. Things looked big, he said. On 

 examining his eyes I found that the pupil did not contract to the light or 

 expand when shaded from the light. His pulse was full. I foolishly omitted 

 to note the number of beats per minute. 



Examining the cobra 1 found the left fang broken off short. The right 

 fang was entire. On cutting down to the poison glands I found the left gland 

 full of poison, and the right gland nearly empty. The man had not noticed 

 any poison scattered about his hand or elsewhere. Ihere must have been 

 some ejected from the right fang, and this was no doubt unnoticed in the 

 natural confusion of the moment and afterwards, 



R. W. BURTON, Captain, 

 Secundekabad, 24:th June 1906. (Indian Army). 



No. XXX.- AN UNUSUAL DISPLACEMENT OF THE HEART 

 IN A WHISTLING- TEAL. 



The specimen which forms the subject of this note was sent to Mr. Phipson 

 in November 1904 by Mr. W. Fisher, I.F.S., who shot the bird near Palghar. 

 In a letter he thus describes what he found : " I was cutting it, and cut the left 

 side of the breast, and first thought it must be a cyst or other . growth. Then 

 I noticed that the two arteries from it passed in between the ' merrythought" 

 and the main bone. I then opened the bird and there was no heart inside." 



Unfortunately, owing to lack of a convenient bottle and scarcity of spirit, — 

 his own whisky being the only preservative he had available, Mr. Fisher sent 

 only the pectoral muscles and not the breast-boDe. The specimen, which is a 

 very remarkable one, is thus deprived of much of its value from the scientific 

 point of view. 



On receiving the specimen from Mr. Phipson, I at once wrote to Mr. Fisher 

 to ask for the breast-bone, but unfortunately it had been thrown out. He, 

 however, assured me that the breast-bone was " normally formed and both sides 

 alike. There was no open split and I do not think a closed cne. The arteries 

 passed round the front of the breast-bone and through the aperture to the 

 inside where they connected with the lungs on the inner side of the backbone." 



On examination of the specimen, I was sure the case was one of ectopia cordis 

 such as one sees examples of, occasionally, in human embryos. To explain 

 how the heart came to be where it is, one must hark back to a very early 

 period of the existence of the bird, while it was still a chick in the egg. On 

 making a transverse section through a very young chick in the egg, one sees a 

 solid rod like portion in the centre of the section called the notocord, and 

 above and below this, a canal, the upper smaller one representing the future 

 spinal canal, and the lower larger one the thoracic cavity." Now, if we have 

 succeeded in seeing this young chick in a sufficiently early stage of develop- 



