1910.] ANATOMY OF HIPPOPOTAMUS AMPHIBIUS. 223. 



sharp turn of the ascending to form the descending colon. This 

 is particularly well seen in, for instance, Tragulus. But it occurs 

 in other Artiodactyles also. 



The enormous stomach of the Hippopotamus has been described 

 by so many writers, indeed by all those quoted above as well as 

 by some earlier contributors to our knowledge of this " Pachy- 

 derm," such as Daubenton. The various chambers of the stomach 

 seem to be now well understood, and in consequence I have not 

 troubled myself to revise the existing knowledge upon this 

 subject. But one matter which I noted in connection with 

 that organ has not been dwelt upon by previous writers. If it 

 has been noted at all, it has escaped my attention. I found 

 in the case of the young animal which I examined, that along a 

 line parallel with the elongated spleen and about coextensive 

 with that organ, the stomach was attached to the ventral parietes 

 by a strong white band of connective tissue. The direction of 

 this was rather obliquely longitudinal, being somewhat between 

 the transverse and the longitudinal planes of the body. On the 

 opposite side of the body the stomach was attached to the dorsal 

 parietes by an equally strong ligament. This latter may, of 

 course, be regarded as the mesogaster. But the homologies of 

 the ventral ligament are not so clear. 



I showed the structure to my colleague Dr. Plimmer, who was 

 of opinion that the ligamentous band was not a pathological 

 structure, and indeed it hardly gave the impression of being of 

 that nature. It may perhaps be regarded as representing a 

 portion of the ventral mesentery, of which in other mammals the 

 falciform ligament is the only representative. In the case of the 

 Hippopotamus, however, the direction of this ligament was not 

 quite such as to lead to a confident assertion of this view of its 

 homology. The attachment of the stomach to the ventral 

 parietes is, I believe, a new structural feature for a mammal. 

 It obviously reveals the conditions which obtain in the Orocodilia 

 (and in Birds). The fixation of so huge an organ as is the 

 stomach of this great beast when distended with food would seem 

 to be a most useful fact in its economy, and it is possibly to be 

 looked upon in this light. For one can hardly make the com- 

 parison suggested Avith the aquatic Orocodilia save as due to a like 

 need. 



The heart in the example which I have studied does not show 

 any marked bifidity of its apex such as has been described in this 

 animal. Indeed nothing of the kind was obvious to me. As 

 Gratiolet has observed, there are no corpora Arantii in the valves 

 of the pulmonary artery. These nodules are also absent from 

 the same valves in the Peccary. The accompanying drawing 

 (text-fig. 22, p. 224) illustrates the interior of the aorta and 

 pulmonary artery, and shows the crescentic depression in each 

 which represents the former orifice of the ductus Botalli. It will 

 be noted that, in accordance with the direction of the tube (which 

 is a solid band in the adult and indicated in the figures already 



