| OCR Text |
Show 1 904.] ANATOMY OF THE LACERTILIA. 469 This septum, furthermore, lies well behind the artery and vein supplying the fore limb. It cannot, therefore, be confused with the transverse membrane found in this and other Lizards running from the base of the heart and other parietes in front of the vessels which supply the fore limb. This anterior transverse septum carries in the neighbourhood of the liver the two epigastric veins, which differ in some particulars from those of other Lizards. As is shown in the accompanying drawing (text-fig. 98), the two epigastric veins, right and left, join Text-fig. 98. Epigastric vein of Tupinambis nigropunctatus. a, median vessel formed by junction of two epigastric veins; b, branch running along gubernaculum cordis to heart; c, branch from liver to vena cava; d, epigastric trunk ; e, epigastric artery; e\ its branch to heart; f, vena cava : H, heart; L, liver. to form a common trunk, which opens into the vena cava close to its emergence from the liver. Exactly opposite to the point of entrance of the conjoined epigastrics a small vein from the liver enters the vena cava. This vein is of the same calibre as the epigastric, and the two are exactly in the same straight line. I cannot but think that what has happened here is that the conjoined epigastrics have secondarily acquired an opening into the vena cava, and that they were originally, as in other Lizards, directly connected with the hepatic portal system. Posteriorly, as in other Lizards, the two epigastric veins reach the two halves of the anterior abdominal. The heart of this lizard, as is generally but * not universally the case among Lizards, is tied clown to the peri- $ cardium by a gubernaculum cordis. Along this run to the walls of the heart a small vein, which is a branch of the two epigastric veins just where they join, and an arterial branch from each of the epigastric arteries which run down the body-wall in close proximity to the epigastric veins. Another epigastric artery accompanies the anterior abdominal vein. It is double in the region of the liver; but further back the two arteries fuse to form one. The liver in this Lizard has only one gastro-hepatic vein, which 31* |
