174 



same individual, which recently died at the Society's Gardens. With 

 reference to them the following notes by Mr. Martin were read. 



" Though the Coypus is now well known to naturalists, I am not 

 aware that much attention has been paid to its anatomy : — it is not 

 often, indeed, that the living animal is brought to Europe, extensive 

 as the importation of its skins appears to be. I am therefore not 

 without a hope that the following notes of the examination of an in- 

 dividual which died in August, 1835, at the Gardens of the Society, 

 will be found not altogether destitute of interest, imperfect as they 

 are from circumstances over which I had no controul. 



"The animal was an adult male, measuring from nose to anus 

 1 foot 11 inches ; the length of the tail being 1 foot 5 inches. The 

 body was very fat ; and the subcutaneous muscle or panniculus car- 

 nosus was strong and extensive, as it is in aquatic Rodents in general. 

 Of the external organs of generation the penis alone was apparent, 

 for the testes are not contained in a scrotum but situated in the groin 

 just without the abdominal ring ; the length of the penis from the 

 pubes was 5 inches ; the glans was acuminate and contained an os- 

 seous stylet. 



" On looking into the abdomen, I found that the viscera had pre- 

 viously been disarranged, in the examination which the animal had 

 undergone with the view of ascertaining the cause of its death ; their 

 natural situation consequently could not be determined. The liver 

 consisted of one left, one middle, and two right lobes, one of which 

 was small and seated dorsad. The middle lobe was deeply cleft; and 

 in the channel continued from the fissure on the under surface of this 

 lobe was seated the gall-bladder, which, having been cut, was desti- 

 tute of its fluid. On distending this viscvs, however, through the 

 ductus choledochus, which was as large as a crow-quill, I found its 

 shape to be a long oval, measuring in length 2 inches, its duct being 

 joined by a large hepatic duct, 4- an inch below its commencement ; 

 the total length of the ductus choledochus communis was 2 inches, 

 and its entrance into the duodenum was just below the sacculated 

 origin of that portion of the intestine, or 2-V inches from the pylorus. 

 "The pancreas consisted of an irregular mass or body concealed 

 by the stomach, whence it spread itself, in thin irregular layers of an 

 elegant arborescent arrangement, through the duodenal mesentery, 

 between the two membranes. Its duct, owing to the pre\'ious dis- 

 arrangement of the viscera, I could not discover ; it did not appear 

 to enter with the biliary. 



" The spleen resembled a prism in its figure, and was 3 inches in 

 length ; it adhered to the cardiac portion of the stomach by a ribband 

 of peritoneum 1 inch m breadth. In the Ondatra, the Capromys, 

 and some other Rodentia, the spleen presents the same figure. 



" The stomach closely resembled that of the Capromys, being of 

 an oblong figure, both extremities having pretty nearly the same 

 volume ; the cardiac extremity projecting 3 inches beyond the en- 

 trance of the narrow asophagus, and the pyloric sacculus a little more 

 than 2 beyond the pyloric orifice. The stomach, measured in a 

 straight line from end to end, was 7 i inches ; its greatest depth 

 being 4^. 



