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Show 1877.] MR. GARROD ON A GALL-BLADDER IN PARROTS. 793 dark on section being made in the cortical portions, and quite white at the apices of the cones. It is the heart which was peculiar, in that neither the ductus arteriosus nor the foramen ovale were obliterated, and they appeared to be as patent as they could ever have been in fcetal life. The question then suggests itself as to whether the animal suffered from cyanosis, of which it died, or whether in the Pinnipedia the semi-foetal circulation continues for longer after birth than in other mammals. The creature having lived for nine days in the Society's Gardens, and having lost the umbilical rudiment a day before it arrived, was probably about a fortnight old when it died, and ought, according to analogy with the human infant, to have lost all traces of the fcetal cardiac peculiarities ; whereas the ductus arteriosus and the foramen ovale were not even beginning to be obliterated. This can hardly have been otherwise than pathological, which leads me to the inference that it died morbidly cyanotic, perhaps because it lacked its normal maternal milk, and so was not in a condition to repair its fcetal imperfections. 8. Note on the Absence or Presence of a Gall-bladder in the family of the Parrots. By A. H . G A R R O D , M.A., F.R.S., Prosector to the Society. [Eeceived October 17, 1877.] In a former communication ** I had the opportunity of showing that the generalization, founded upon the dissection of an insufficient number of genera, that the gall-bladder is wanting in the Columbae, does not apply to Carpophaga, Lopholeemus, or Ptilonopus. On the present occasion I have to correct a similar error with reference to the Psittaci, because I have found a well-developed gall-bladder in specimens of Cacatua philippinarum, Cacatua goffini, Cacatua moluccensis, and Calopsitta novee-hollandice, in which last-named species it is small and easily overlooked. In m y earlier dissections I have not recorded the presence of a gall-bladder in any species of Parrot. That, no doubt, is because, it being absent in so many, I did not expect to find it. From the above facts it is highly probable that the presence of a gall-bladder in the Cacatuinae will have to be included among the characteristic peculiarities of this subfamily. At the same time its persistence in them is in favour of the view that the Palaeorni-thinae, as restricted by me2, are but little different from the ancestral Parrots, and the Cacatuinae still less so. The primitive Parrots must have possessed a gall-bladdder-because we now know that this organ is present in the Cacatuinae, and consequently was not absent in the primitive species, as the probability that it should have been independently developed a second time is infinitely little. 1 P. Z. S. 1874, p. 257. 2 P. Z. S. 1874, p. 594. |