ON THE BRAIN OF MACROSCELIDES. 445, 
Notes on the Brain of Macroscelides and other Lusectivora. 
By G. Exxtor Suiru, M.D., Fellow of St. John’s College, 
Cambridge; Professor of Anatomy, Egyptian Government 
School of, Medicine, Cairo. (Communicated by Prof. G. B. 
Howes, F.R.S., Sec. L.S.) 
[Read 1st May, 1902.] 
My friend Dr. Robert Broom has recently discovered that 
the organ of Jacobson and its cartilages in the Elephant-Shrew 
present a peculiarly close similarity to the corresponding parts 
in the Marsupialia, and has moreover found* metatheroid 
features in the skeleton of Jlacroscelides in addition to those 
previously recorded by Kitchen Parker. It seemed to him that 
it would be of considerable interest to submit to careful 
examination the other parts of the body which present distinctive 
features in the Marsupialia. Accordingly he has kindly sent 
me the heads of an adult and a foetal Jlacroscelides proboscideus, 
and asked me to make a report upon them. 
The heads had been simply placed in spirit, so that the brains 
were not in a condition altogether favourable for histological 
study. In fact the fetal brain was too soft to permit of 
auything more than a study of the configuration of its surface. 
The adult brain, however, was sufficiently firm to be cut in 
paraffin. The sections were stained with lithium-carmine. 
As the presence or absence of metatheroid features can in 
almost all mammalian brains be detected by the naked eye, I first 
submitted the brain to a thorough examination both by this 
means and with the help of a lens. I then split it in the mesial 
sagittal section and studied the mesial surface in the same way ; 
aud as many points still needed elucidation, I cut a series of 
coronal sections of one hemisphere and dissected the other. 
The brain of Macroscelides has been figured from the dorsal 
aspect by Peters tT; and its general features need not be described 
in detail, since they differ to no great extent from those of 
Talpa, which have been so thoroughly described in Ganser’s 
classic monograph ¢. 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. 1902, vol. i., March, 18th. 
t Peters, ‘Reise nach Mossambique,’ Zool. i. Saugethiere, pl. xxiv, fig. 13. 
Berlin, 1852. 
t Vergleich, Anat. Studien. ‘“ Ueber das Gehirn d. Maulwurfs,’’ Morph. 
Jahrb. Bd. vii. p. 591 (1881). 
