380 CETACEA. 



joining others, or to an increase of substance at certain points of junction of the 

 retiform connective tissue. Eilling the interspaces is the more pulpy subtance 

 composed of innumerable cells and granules, and occasionally aggregations of both, 

 in some places thinner, in others thicker, as the case may be. These nucleated 

 cells or globules correspond in size, shape, and general appearance to ordinary 

 lymph corpuscles, which they doubtless are. The stellate appearance, above men- 

 tioned, in the fibrous net- work or trabecular frame- work is due in some instances to 

 more closely adherent masses of these corpuscles, in others to the junction of 

 spindle-shaped cells of the trabeculse. 



Scattered throughout the gland tissues may be observed some unequally shaped 

 open spaces which presumably may be regarded as the so-called lymph sinuses. 

 Lastly, it may be noticed, that although throughout the general glandular substance 

 there does not clearly seem to be a true vascular rete mirabile, nevertheless there 

 exists towards the surface of the gland a layer which assumes this character. This 

 layer on cross-sections shows a congeries of vessels of a variety of sizes matted 

 together and to some extent in intercommunication. These vessels are distributed 

 through a mass of elastic fibres, and, here and there, linear, elongate but narrow, or 

 large elliptical vacuities exist. These last may be the venous channels, but the 

 exact relation and office of the lacunae or vacuities it is difiicult to make out 

 satisfactorily. 



While thus we have, not only in the stomach, but elsewhere, in this Cetacean, 

 as I shall afterwards mention, large lymphatic glands, enclosed as it were in blood- 

 channels and doubtlessly in close physiological connection with them, the precise 

 intercommunication of the lymph and blood in these organs, and whether it has any 

 connection with or relation to the habitat and habits of Cetacea, are obscure 

 problems yet to be solved.^ 



Relations of omentum to the viscera. — Tracing it from the angle of union of 

 the first and second stomachs, it arches round to the lower curvature of the first 

 mentioned of these two cavities until it reaches the notch at its left end ; this 

 marks the beginning of the third stomach along the lower curvature, where it passes 

 and is continued for an inch on to the duodenum, PL XXVII, fig. 13. Leaving the 

 duodenum it turns to the left and is attached along the lower border of the pan- 

 creas. But the gastro-duodenal artery, as it courses forwards behind the duodenum, 

 carries with it a fold of omentum up to the septum of the third stomach, so that a 

 small omental sac exists at that point where the artery reaches the third stomach, 

 and another and much larger sac lies to the right and somewhat behind the former 

 and is produced by the free forward arching of the artery. The omentum is 

 prolonged along the left border of the pancreas a short way along its anterior 

 margin, thence passes to the left to be attached to the apex of the first stomach, 

 thus giving rise to a largo sac, extending from the duodenum to the last mentioned 

 locality, and thus enclosing the pancreas and the two small sacculations already 



^ See Turner and Murie's remarks and reflections on this subject in the Memoirs already quoted. 



