

1891.] Notes on the Hearts of Certain Mammals. 863 
the oblique vein of Marshall, which cccupies the place below the 
pericardium that the left precava does when present, is not shown in 
the illustrations or mentioned in the works of Owen, Wiedersheim, 
Howell, or Wilder and Gage’s Technology. Not sending branches 
into the substance of the heart, it is not, as older anatomists thought, 
a branch of the great coronary vein. Although said to be im- 
provided with a valve, I found one over its orifice in the heart of 
the monkey (Cercocebus fuliginosus). Marshall holds that the 
oblique vein of Marshall is the remnant of the left azygos of the 
foetus. Since those animals that have the oblique vein of Marshall 
shall have also the termination of the azygos emptying into the 
left brachio-cephalic, I cannot agree with Marshall in this res- 
pect. The embryo heart shows the oblique vein to be the termi- 
nal portion of the primitive left precava. 
