468 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP [1881. 



ON A F(ETAL KANGAROO AND ITS MEMBRANES. 

 BY HENRY C. CHAPMAN, M.D. 



Since the publication, nearly fifty years ago, of Prof. Owen's 

 invaluable paper ^ " On the Generation of the Marsupial Animals," 

 in which the fcetal Kangaroo and membranes were first described, 

 no further contribution has been made to our knowledge of this 

 very important subject. Indeed some naturalists at the present 

 day seem indisposed to accept Prof. Owen's statement that there 

 is no connection in the Kangaroo between the foetal membrane 

 and the uterus, or, in other words, that no placenta is developed ; 

 and that, therefore, the division of the mammalia into non-placental 

 and placental is not a valid one. Even though the present 

 communication should not contain anything particularl}^ new, I 

 trust, however, that it will not be received without interest, if for 

 no other reason than that it comfirms essentially Prof. Owen's 

 descriptions. 



One would have naturally supposed that, during the past half 

 century, among all the Kangaroos killed in Australia and opened 

 in various zoological gardens, at least one fatal Kangaroo 

 would have been found. As a matter of fact, however, this does 

 not appear to have been the case, or, at least, if such was found, 

 no record was made of it. Impressed with this fact, I never 

 failed to examine the generative apparatus in the female Kangaroos 

 wbich died from time to time in the Philadelphia Zoological 

 Garden, with the hope that I might obtain an embryo. In 

 September, 1879, I was successful, finding the specimen which 

 forms the subject of the present communication, and to which I 

 incidentally alluded in a previous communication to the Academy.^ 



The female Kangaroo, in which I found the embr^^o, was a fine 

 example of the Maci^opus giganteus, and had taken the male about 

 fourteen days before its death, which was caused by injuries 

 inflicted upon itself, due to a fright incident to the boxing the animal 

 for shipment. The embryo, PL XX, was, therefore, not more than 

 fourteen days old. On opening the uterus of the left side, which was 

 considerably swollen, the embryo Kangaroo was seen through the 



1 Philos. Transact., 1834. 



'^ Placenta of the Elephant, Journal of Acad., vol. viii, p. 5. 



