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Show 1870.] ANATOMY OF THE PRONGBUCK. 345 The mouth is sparingly lined with flat moderate-sized papillae as in the Sheep. The faucial membrane is well supplied with mucus-glands. The tonsils, enclosed in a chamber, are each about the size of a pea, and open, as in the Giraffe, by a single wide fossa in the recess on either side behind the faucial pillars, and very slightly in advance of the tip of the epiglottis. The uvula descends slightly, and is continuous laterally with a raised musculo-membranous ring guarding the pharyngeal opening; so that when the parts are in natural position an approach is discernible to that remarkable sphincter grasping of the cetacean larynx; only, of course, in the Prongbuck the epiglottis and arytenoids are quite diminutive. The pharyngeal constrictors are of moderate thickness, but nevertheless well marked. Anteriorly the tongue, more Antelope- or Goat- than Deer-like, has a greyish hue-but beneath is of a dull leaden tinge, darker at the sides of the root or where the whitish papillae are shortest and sparsest. It is spatular in figure, slightly narrowest about the middle, and thins very much at the broadly rounded apex. Length 6£ inches, and from li to 1| inch in breadth: the free portion beyond the fraenum under ordinary conditions measures 2 inches. Fully more than the anterior half of the dorsum is so crowded with short flattened cuspidate retrocumbent or filiform papillae (fl) as to simulate the pile of velvet; these increase in size in the middle line behind and towards the prominent part of the root, where they form a crescent-shaped patch, the horns directed backwards. Posteriorly the papillae gradate into flattened elevations. The patch above mentioned forms a prominent feature in the tongue of both the Ox and Sheep. A long strip of separate papillae circumvallatae (c), some forty or more in number, are found on each lateral aspect of the dorsum, abreast of the papillary patch already spoken of, and behind to the very root. Each is glandular, of a black colour, depressed centrally, and surrounded by a deep fossa. The representatives of fungiform papillae (fg) appear as black dots scattered over the entire dorsum, with the exception of the root. As Prof. Owen* describes in the Giraffe, these obtuse papillae appear " somewhat sparingly scattered as coarse grains of gunpowder ; " only they are necessarily smaller in the Prongbuck. The larynx does not present any striking external feature such as the great thyroid enlargement of Antelope gutturosa-^ and Hyomoschus aquaticusX, nor internal peculiarity of the subepiglottidean pouching met with in Gazella dorcas § and Tarandus rangifer. Indeed, so far as general construction is concerned, it might equally belong to either the Cervidae or Bovidae. The sketch C, fig. 3, enables the upper view of the parts to be understood. The epiglottis (Ep) is a broad, almost crescent-shaped leaflet, the apex, however, being slightly acuminate. In natural position * Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. ii. p. 224. t Vid. Pallas, Spic. Zcol. tab. iii. fig. 16. | Flower, P. Z. S. 1867, p. 956. § Meckel, Anat. Comp. x. p. 604. |