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Show 786 MR. A. H. GARROD ON THE [Dec. 2, crossed each other like crossed swords, exposing the tail between. In all m y specimens the pupil of the eye is circular, and the deep-brown iris complete. These birds were only procurable here for a week. The specimens brought were very thin and much exhausted ; and, curiously, all males. Not a female was to be seen or had ! There can be no doubt that this is a good species, and has nothing to do on the one hand with D. nigripes, Aud., nor on the other with the young of D. brachyura, T e m m . Cassin appears to have confounded it with the former, and to have believed it to be the young of the latter. Temminck and Schlegel appear to have figured it in the ' Fauna Japonica ' for the young of D. brachyura ; and I think Gould has made a similar mistake in the 'Birds of Australia.' I do not know the young of D. brachyura ; but these were no young birds, and I would hence crave permission to introduce our bird as a new species under the name Diomedea derogata, sp. nov. 8. On the Visceral Anatomy of the Ground-Rat (Aulacodus swindernianus). By A. H . G A R R O D , B.A., Prosector to the Society. [Received December 1, 1873.] Our knowledge of the visceral anatomy of the Rodents is still in so incomplete a state, and the prevalent ideas on their classification so correspondingly vague, that until the details of the structure of the most important types have been published, it will be impossible to judge of their mutual affinities. I take the present opportunity of noting the most important points in the Ground-Rat (Aulacodus swindernianus) of West and South Africa, a male specimen having very recently died in the Society's Gardens. The tongue is elongate and narrow, not divided into an anterior thin, and a posterior deeper portion, but of nearly uniform depth, blunt and rounded at the tip. Among the papillae filiformes of its superior surface, papillse fungiformes are scattered in small numbers. The circumvallate papillse are represented by two long, narrow, elongate, circumvallate elevations, one on each side of the median line, where they nearly meet, running forwards as they diverge to form a V. The root of the tongue is covered by large, lax, and scattered conical papillae between those last described and the hyoid bone; further back it is smooth. The salivary glands present no peculiarities ; the submaxillary are the largest. The oesophagus, after perforating the diaphragm, runs for half an inch or more in the abdominal cavity before it joins the stomach ; its epithelium, in the inverted stomach, projects beyond the cardiac orifice as a stiff puckered tube for about one-eighth of an inch. The stomach is simple, proportionally slightly longer than in man, with the pyloric cul-de-sac also a little more developed. Its mucous membrane is smooth, except near the pyloric end, where there are a |
