Mammalia / by Frank Evers Beddard.

  • Beddard, Frank E. (Frank Evers), 1858-1925.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mammalia / by Frank Evers Beddard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    teat would of course be absolutely incomparable with a mammary pouch, because in that case the wall of the teat itself would be the pouch. Mammals belonging to quite different Orders show traces more or less marked of a marsupium. In young Dogs the teats are borne upon an area where the skin is thinner, the covering of hair less dense than elsewhere—all points of resemblance to the inside of the pouch of a Marsupial; in addition to this there are traces of the sphincter marsupii muscle. In other Carnivora there are similar vestiges. In Lemur catta a more complete rudiment of a marsupial pouch is to be met with. In this Lemur the teats are both inguinal and pectoral; the skin in these regions is thin and but slightly hairy, and extends forwards as two bands of the same thinness and smoothness on each side of the densely hairy skin covering the sternum. This area is sharply separated from the rest of the integument by a fold which runs parallel to the longitudinal axis of the body, and can be comparable with nothing save the rudiment of the marsupial fold. One is tempted to wonder how far the habit which certain Lemurs have of carrying their young across the abdomen with the tail wrapped round the body of the mother is a reminiscence of a marsupial pouch. Skeleton. The skeleton of the Mammalia consists almost solely of the endoskeleton. It is only among the Edentata that an exo¬ skeleton of bony plates in the skin is met with. As in other Vertebrates, the skeleton is divisible into an axial portion, the skull and vertebral column, and an appendicular skeleton, that of the limbs. The bones of mammals are well ossified, and in the adult there are but few and small tracts of cartilage left. Vertebral Column.—The vertebral column of the mammals, like that of the higher Vertebrata, consists of a number of separate and fully-ossified vertebrae. The constitution of a vertebra upon which all the usual processes are marked is as follows:—There is first of all the body or centrum of the vertebra, a massive piece of bone shaped like a disc or a cylinder. The centra of contiguous vertebrae