358 ON THE ANATOMICAL PECULIAIUTIES 
Since the foregoing paper was read to the Wernerian 
Society, I have had an opportunity of dissecting two other 
specimens of the Sturgeon, and of verifying some state- 
ments, and completing others which were deficient. 
The first of these was a small male, measuring from 
the tip of the snout to that of the caudal fin 30 inches, 
caught in the Firth of Forth on the 5th of August ; the 
second was a female measuring 3 feet 7 inches, reported to 
be caught off the mouth of the Esk, below Musselburgh. 
Though, in the foregoing account, I described the sto- 
mach of the sturgeon exactly as I found it, I was not a 
little perplexed to find that my description of the direction 
of the organ, though derived from the parts exactly in 
situ, by no means corresponded with the delineation given 
by Sir Everard Home in the Philosophical Transactions, 
and subsequently republished in his Lectures on Com- 
parative Anatomy. In these works the stomach of the 
sturgeon is represented as descending on the right side of 
the vertebral column, making a curvature or bend, and as- 
cending on the left side to its first level, and once more 
forming a curvature, crossing the mesial plane^ and descend- 
ing a little to constitute the pylorus. In the first speci- 
men, in which the stomach of the animal was completely 
crammed with alimentary matter, the first curvature was 
by no means distinct, or rather it was so indistinct as not 
to be recognised. In the two latter specimens, especially 
the third, in which the stomach was empty, and formed a 
long cylindrical tube, the curvatures were nearly the same 
as represented by Sir Everard Home. A little below the 
cardia it bulges into a fusiform swelling, represented at C, 
(Fig. 5.) then contracts and descends for 3 or 4 inches, makes 
a round bend, and crossing the mesial plane to the left side of 
the vertebral column, ascends, makes another round turn 
