ARTICULAR CARTILAGE. 
159 
Elephant, have no ligamentum teres ; in the Frog 
there is no ligamentum teres in the hips, but one 
in the shoulder-joint ; the use of the ligament in this 
situation being explicable by the habits of the Frog, 
that of hopping and pitching principally on its fore-feet, 
whereby a considerable tendency to dislocation must 
necessarily occur in the shoulder-joint. If the ligament 
be examined in a well injected foetus, a large supply of 
blood-vessels will be found in the synovial membrane of 
the acetabulum which proceed in straight lines along 
the ligament, and terminate in loops close to its insertion 
into the head of the femur. A preparation illustrative of 
this fact is accurately represented in Plate VIII., 
Fig. 9, of the “ Histological Catalogue,” but the looped 
termination of the capillaries is best seen in Fig. 8, this 
being a more highly magnified view of that part of the 
femur into which the ligament is inserted. 
The vessels of synovial membrane, and those of the 
sheaths of tendons, have been well described by Mr. 
Toynbee and Mr. Rainey, especially by the former gen- 
tleman, who has figured those of the ligamentum teres 
in a paper published in the “ Philosophical Transactions” 
for 1841. The beautiful looped vessels are not confined 
to the human subject, but exist in most of the lower 
animals. In the long flexor tendons of the leg of an 
Ostrich , circular patches of capillaries may be seen, each 
of which, as shown in Fig. 122, b, terminates in a dilated 
loop. The vessels of tendon which were exhibited when 
describing the vascularity of fibrous structures, were 
