THE URLXOGEXITAL SYSTEM 403 



day; retrogression begins immediately and is completed, or at 

 any rate far advanced, on the eleventh day. In this process the 

 epithelial wall disappears first, and its place is taken by cells 

 of mesenchymatous appearance, though it is not known that 

 transformation of one kind into the other takes place. Retro- 

 gression begins posteriorly and proceeds in the direction of the 

 head; the ostium is the last to disappear. The mesenchymatous 

 tunic shares in the process, so that the ridge is no longer found 

 (see Fig. 222). In the male the Mlillerian ducts never open into 

 the cloaca. 



In the female the development of the right Mlillerian duct 

 ceases after the eighth day, and it soon begins to degenerate. Its 

 lumen disappears and it becomes relatively shorter, so that its 

 anterior end appears to sUp back along the Wolffian body. On 

 the fifteenth day slight traces remain along its former course and 

 a small cavity in the region of the cloaca. It never obtains an 

 opening into the cloaca (Gasser.) 



With the degeneration of the anterior end of the Wolffian 

 body the ostium tubse abdominale comes to be attached by a 

 ligament to the body-wall (Fig. 231); farther back the ligamen- 

 tous attachment is to the Wolffian body. 



The fimbriae begin to develop on the eighth day on both 

 sides in both sexes. It is only in the left oviduct of the female, 

 however, that development proceeds farther, and differentiation 

 into ostium, glandular part, and shell gland takes place. This 

 appears distinctly about the twelfth day. The lower end ex- 

 pands to form the primordium of the shell-gland at this time, 

 but does not open into the cloaca. Indeed, the opening is not 

 established until after the hen is six months old (Gasser.) 



IV. The Suprarenal Capsules 



The suprarenals of the hen are situated medial to the anterior 

 lobe of the kidney, in the neighborhood of the gonad and vena 

 cava inferior. They have a length of about 8-10 mm. The 

 substance consists of two kinds of cords of cells, known respect- 

 ively as cortical and medullary cords, irregularly intermingled; 

 the so-called cortical cords make up the bulk of the substance, 

 and the medullary cords occur in the meshes of the cortical cords. 

 The terminology does not, therefore, describe well the topo- 

 graphical arrangement of the components; it was derived from 



