800 ON THE UROGERITAL ORGANS OF THE KANGAROO, 



thoroughly injected it with mercury from one of the Fallopian 

 tubes, that it was put completely on the stretch, yet no trace of 

 an opening was to be seen, and it is to me not at all doubtful 

 that the embryo is born through the lateral canals of the uterus." 



Carus*" in 1824 had the opportunity of dissecting a female 

 kangaroo with a mammary foetus. He found that a communica- 

 tion existed between the mesial vaginal sac and the urogenital 

 passage, and though its aperture was glued-up there was no 

 considerable resistance offered to the passage of a probe. It 

 would also appear that, in the main, Carus accepted Home's 

 views. In this, as in the two previous cases, the animals are 

 merely spoken of as "kangaroos " without being referred to any 

 genera. 



In 1834 Prof. Owenf published his paper " On the generation 

 of the Marsupial animals with a description of the impregnated 

 uterus of the Kangaroo," in which he states as follows : — "The 

 foetus has been conjectured to pass into the urethro- sexual cavity 

 by a direct aperture formed after impregnation at the lower blind 

 end of the cul-de-sac, but I have not been able to discover any 

 trace of such a foramen in two kangaroos which had borne young ; 

 and besides, I find that this part of the vagina is not continuous 

 by means of its proper tissue with the urethro- sexual passage, 

 but is connected to it by cellular membrane only ; and this 

 structure is agreeable to what is presented in the simpler forms 

 of the marsupial uterus, as in D. dorsigera and the Petauri, in 

 which the culs-de-sac do not even come into contact with the 

 urethro- sexual passage." The same statement is repeated in the 

 same author's article Marsupialia in Todd's Cyclopaedia Vol. III. 

 (1841) and the following reference to Home's paper is made on 

 p. 319. "I have already shewn that one of the chief grounds of 

 the theory of marsupial generation there proposed is untenable, 



*Lehrbuch der vergl. Zootomie. 

 tPhil. Trans., Vol. cxxiv., 1834, pp. 333-364. 



