POUCH 



Iii the Marsupials the pouch shelters the young, which are 

 born in an exceedingly imperfect state, minute, nude, and blind, 

 with a " larval " mouth fitted only to grasp in a permanent 

 fashion the teat, upon which they are carefully fixed by the 

 parent. But even later the pouch is made use of as a temporary 

 harbour of refuge : from the pouch of female Kangaroos at the 

 Zoological Gardens may frequently be observed to protrude the tail 



g.m. 



FJ<;. -j. Echidna hystrix. A, Lower surface of brooding female ; B, dissection showing 

 a dorsal view of the pouch and mammary glands ; tt, the two tufts of hair in the 

 lateral folds of the mammary pouch from which tlie secretion flow s. b.m, Pouch ; 

 d, cloaca ; g.m, groups of mammary glands. (From Wiedersheim's Compared ice 

 Anatomy, alter W. Haacke.) 



and hind-legs of a young Kangaroo as big as a Cat, and perfectly 

 well able to take care of itself. 



In the Moiiotremata (in Echidna} there is a deep fold of 

 the skin which lodges the unhatched egg, and into which the 

 mammary glands -open, one on either side. This structure" is only 

 periodically developed, and arises from two rudiments, one corre- 

 sponding to each mammary area ; but in the female with eggs or 

 young there is but a single deep depression, which occupies the 

 same region of the body as the marsupial pouch of the Mar- 



