Observations on the anatomy of Nycticebus tardigradus / by St. George Mivart and James Murie.

  • Mivart, St. George Jackson, 1827-1900.
Date:
[1865]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the anatomy of Nycticebus tardigradus / by St. George Mivart and James Murie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    tion that the liver, which, according to our authors, offers “de grande* differences individuelles,” in our specimen showed a very interesting uniformity in the number and relative dimensions of its lohes. It corresponded with the conditions represented and described by Professor Iluxley1 as existing in the allied form of Arctocehus. The liver in Loris does not seem to he very different, according to Buffon2 and Martin3 4. In Cheiromys1 there is also a singular re- semblance to Nycticebus tardiyradus in the form and divisions of this organ. This extends even to the direction of the fundus of the gall-blad- der, which, according to Professor Peters5 6, in a paper read at Berlin in April 1864, is in Cheiromys directed in the normal manner, in- stead of the abnormal manner peculiar to the other Madagascar Lemuroidea. The caecum has the elongated prolongation (like, if not really and essentially, a vermiform appendix) which is figured and described in the memoir. The comparatively small zoological importance of this character is, however, shown by the fact that in Cheiromys a condition exists very similar to that presented by Nycticebus, while in the closely allied genus Arctocebus0 and in Loris7 there is no trace of any such prolongation. The generative organs present no difference, worthy of remark, from the description already given in the memoir on Stenops, the uterus being bicorned, and the clitoris very large and perforated by the urethra. The kidneys, suprarenal capsules, and bladder are similar to those of Arctocehuss, except that the ureters do not enter so low down towards the neck of the bladder. If we sum up the results of onr investigation upon the anatomy of Nycticebus tardiyradus, we are led to note the interesting peculiari- ties offered by the muscles of the limbs,—on the one hand, the re- appearance and, as it were, exaggeration of that anthropoid muscle, the flexor longus pollicis ; on the other hand, its resemblance, by the interlacements of its tendons with those of the flexor profundus, to the conditions always offered by the foot in Primates—a resemblance which has already been noticed by Professor Huxley in his Hun- terian Lectures for 1864. We are also struck with the almost atrophied gastrocnemius, but concomitantly augmented flexor longus communis, which last, in- verting the analogy of the flexor longus pollicis, resembles a hand- flexor in its origin from the proximal bone of the limb. Likewise are we impressed with the very large size of the rectus 1 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 330, fig. 9. 2 Hist. Nat. tome xiii. p. 216. 3 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1833, p. 23. 4 Owen, loc. cit. p. 73. See Notice in Nat. Hist. Review, Jan. 1865, p. 149. 6 Huxley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 329, fig. 9. ' Buffon, Hist. Nat. vol. xiii. pi. 31. fig. 2. * Huxley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 332, fig. 11. [17]