860 The American Naturalist. [October, 
A CASE OF LATEROVERSION OF THE OPHIDIAN 
HEART 
By PIERRE A. FrisH. 
The specimen had already been partially dissected by one 
of the laboratory students in the Anatomical Department 
(Cornell) before attention was called to the peculiar cardiac 
arrangement. 
The body had been divested of its in until within six 
centimeters of the vent and seven centimeters of the tip of 
the mandible; the cranium had been removed, leaving the 
mandible still attached to the body; the heart had been 
exposed and the ventral portion of the pericardial sac, if any 
had existed, was gone. A normal specimen was put into the 
hands of the student for further dissection and the anomalous 
one has awaited careful examination since 1891. 
Enough characters remained to enable one to identify it 
with a reasonable amount of certainty as Ophibolus doliatus 
var. triangulus or as commonly known, the spotted adder or 
milk snake. 
Its total length was 85 centimeters (2 feet 10 inches); from 
the tip of the mandible to the apex of the heart the distance was 
11 centimeters, the heart itself from the apex of the ventricle 
to the base of the right auricle being 1:8 centimeters. 
The interior of the pericardium (already exposed) presented 
a somewhat cone-shaped cavity through the length of which, 
and a little to the right of the mid-line, the pulmonary and 
post caval veins passed. These did not lie freely in the sac 
but were held in place by a narrow, but distinct fold project- 
ing from the dorsal wall of the pericardium. 
A considerable depression for the reception of the ventricle 
was formed just cephalad of the auricles by a sinistral deflection 
of the trachea and cesophagus; the trachea also showed signs 
of compression on the side adjacent to the heart. No trace of 
a true pericardium was apparent here, but there seemed to be 
a somewhat excessive development of connective tissue. 
