BY J. J. 1 LETCHEE, B.A., 13. Sc. 653 



after the obliteration of the rest of the original aperture, when, 

 evidently within a few, probably not more than ten, sections of 

 reaching the meatus urinarius, a piece of tissue broke off and put 

 a stop to further operations. In all these sections the remnant 

 of the above mentioned hole is distinctly traceable though it has 

 gradually become smaller and is situated in the middle of a small 

 area different in appearance from the surrounding tissue. Now 

 whether this is merely a pocket of the median vagina, or whether, 

 if it had been situated in the middle line it might not have become 

 a direct communication to the urogenital canal, is not easy to 

 decide. At any rate it is of interest as shewing that there 

 was a much closer connection between the tissue of the cul-de-sac 

 and that of the urogenital canal, than was the case in the specimens 

 figured and described by Professor Owen and by Brass, a point 

 to which further reference will be made. 



The remaining twenty-two specimens were carefully dissected, 

 but there was no direct communication in any single example. I 

 was able in every case to make out the caecal condition of the 

 cul-de-sac, as well as the absence of any aperture but that of the 

 meatus urinarius, on the wall of the urogenital canal. The 

 distance from the end of the cul-de-sac to the ostium urethras 

 averages iV in., but I have met with it as low as -A- in., and as 

 high as tV, but it is quite possible that the exact position of the 

 urethral orifice may not be quite invariable. 



At present, leaving out of consideration the Rat Kangaroos, 

 which so far, are in the same category, Macropus major is the 

 only species of kangaroo in which this post imrtum absence of a 

 direct communication between the median vagina and the uro- 

 genital canal, is certainly known to exist. True it is that its 

 presence has not yet been met with in M. Parryi, Dendrolagus 

 iiiustus, or Dorcopsis lucfuosa, but of the first and last only one 

 isolated specimen in each case, and of the second only three 

 specimens have been examined, and in no single instance is there 

 any evidence forthcoming that parturition had taken place. 



