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Show 1905.] ANATOMY OP THE LEATHERY TURTLE. 317 The gall-bladder lies half embedded in the deep surface of the right lobe, just distal to the attachment of the duodenal mesentery. A very short common bile-duct, formed by the union of the cystic duct with an hepatic duct coming from the left lobe, enters the wall of the intestine slightly to the left of the gall-bladder. The duct does not, however, open into the intestine here, but runs on, as a dilated channel 15 mm. in diameter, for another 9 cm., away from the pylorus, and there opens by a long slit-like mouth bordered by foliate lips. A similar arrangement of the bile-duct has been briefly described by Temminck*. The Mesenteries. When the body-cavity is opened along the ventral surface, the coils of the small intestine are seen lying to the right and the oesophagus, stomach, and first part of the intestine to the left. The coils of the intestine are suspended by a sheet of mesentery in the ordinary way, but the complex on the left is apparently enclosed almost completely within a loose peritoneal bag (text-fig. 70, pt.s.). The relations of this bag to the various parts of the alimentary canal in connection with it were not determined in every particular, but so far as seen were as follows:- Text-fig. 71. ttr sJr Dennoclielys coriacea, diagrammatic transverse section through the mid-region of the peritoneal sac. Letters as in text-fig. 70. The descending oesophagus when it enters the abdominal cavity is surrounded by a loosely fitting layer of splanchnic peritoneum. Alono- the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the oesophagus this layer "ives off a pair of mesenteric sheets that form by their union °a closed sac (text-fig. 71, pt.s.). In the dorsal wall of the sac are suspended the coils of the tubular stomach, and in its ventral wall the first segment of the small intestine. Free, within its cavity, lie the ascending arm of the oesophagus and the globular region of the stomach suspended by a mesentery criveit oft' from "the left surface of the descending oesophagus. & * Temminck : Fauna Japonica (Reptilia), 1838, p. 6. |
