12 JAS. p. HILL. 



forwardly directed portion of the lateral vaginal canal, to 

 open into the base o£ the corresponding vaginal caecum. 

 The latter, functioning as a receptacnlum seniinis, is simply 

 an outgrowth of the lateral vaginal canal at the point at 

 which it bends round to pass posteriorly. Throughout their 

 entire extent the lateral vaginal canals are embedded in the 

 tissue of the urogenital strand, which represents nothing else 

 than the persistent genital cord of the pouch young. 



Sections through the urogenital strand of this stage show 

 that the connective tissue separating the lateral vaginal 

 canals, in which in uni- or multi-parous females the pseudo- 

 vaginal passage is found to occur, is quite uniform in 

 character, and only differs from that of the virgin in being 

 very vascular. 



In females, then, which have not given birth to young, 

 the two median vaginal cul-de-sacs do not open into each 

 other, and, as I pointed out before, no trace of a pseudo- 

 vaginal passage is present. But after parturition has once 

 been effected, the two median vaginae are found to open into 

 each other posteriorly to form a short common median vagina, 

 and from this the pseudo-vaginal passage leads away. The 

 young in Perameles thus reach the exterior by way of a 

 median passage constituted in front by a short epithelially 

 lined tube a few millimetres in length — the common 

 median vagina — and behind by a relatively extremely long 

 cleft-like space, 3 to 4 cm. in length, entirely destitute of an 

 epithelial lining — the median pseudo- vaginal passage — 

 situated in the connective tissue between the lateral vaginal 

 canals. 



In the paper above referred to the phenomena of parturi- 

 tion are described at length, and the conclusion is arrived at 

 ''that Perameles, in respect to the phenomena connected 

 with that process, stands in no way alone amongst Marsupials 

 as an aberrant and specialised type, but, quite on the contrary, 

 exhibits more primitive features in the mode of birth of the 

 young than are shown by any other Marsupial hitherto 

 descinbed as possessing a direct median passage." In 



