1891.] 



BRAIN OF THE MALE THYLACINE. 



141 



The only descriptions of the Thylacine brain with which I am 

 acquainted are contained in Professor Flower's memoir upon the Mar- 

 supial brain \ that by Gervais, and that by Sir Richard Owen in the 

 ' Anatomy of Vertebrates.' Prof. Flower figures the internal aspect 

 of a longitudinal median section as w^ell as a transverse section 

 through the corpus callosum. His description of the brain is 

 limited to the following passage in his paper (p. 646) : — 



"The large carnivorous Marsupial, the Thylacine (Thylacinus 



Fig. 2. 



Right J/alp- 



X^t'^ 



Brain of Thjlacine, right and left halves, a little reduced from 

 natural size. 8, Sylvian fissure. T, Ehinal fissure. 



cynocephalus), so widely separated in external characters from both 

 the Kangaroo and Wombat, shows the same general peculiarities of 

 cerebral organization, but attended with a smaller development of the 

 superior transverse commissure, especially of its anterior part, and 

 a greater reduction of the thickness of the interventricular septum." 

 Sir Richard Owen (Joe. cit. vol. iii. p. 105) remarks that Thylacinus 

 " has the anterior apex of the hemisphere marked off by a deeper 

 transverse fissure, extending to the inner surface," and that " there 

 is a short fissure above the back part of the hippocampal one." He 

 does not, however, refer to any fuller description of this brain, but 



^ " On the Commissures of the Cerebral Hemispheres of the Marsupialia and 

 Mouotrem ata as compared with those of the Placental Mammals/' Phil. Traus. 

 1865, pp. 633-651, pis. xxxvi.-xxxviii. 



