420 Mr. A. Alcock on 
consisting of a large ovary and oviduct, are found on the left 
side only. In my original paper (‘Journal of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal,’ vol. lix. pt. 11. p. 53), describing a large 
female of this species taken in one of the estuaries of the 
river Mahdnadi in December 1888, I stated that the right 
oviduct alone was present. I was writing from rough notes 
taken when the specimen, which was hopelessly large for 
preservation, was hastily dissected by the dim light of a 
ship’s lantern in one of the scuppers of the ship; and I think 
it very probable that I may have mistaken my bearings, for 
these reasons—first, that owing to the position of the large 
spiral gut on the right side we have an obvious physical 
preference for the development of the left oviduct, and 
secondly, that in all the pregnant rays that I have since dis- 
sected, where only one oviduct is present it is always the 
left. 
The terminal portion of the (left) oviduct formed a large 
oval fleshy tumour or uterus, the end of which projected into 
the cloaca like an “os uter?”’ into a vagina. On opening 
this a single male foetus was found to fill its cavity, the foetus 
lying naked, tightly folded, and unattached in any way to 
the parent. It had the following dimensions :—Extreme 
length, from tip of snout to tip of tail, 3 feet, length of body- 
disk 8 inches, and breadth of body-disk 8 inches. On 
removing it attention is next attracted to the sticky, greasy, 
creamy material which is smeared over the inner surface of 
the uterine wall, and when this is removed the uterine 
mucous membrane is exposed. The mucous membrane has 
a shaggy appearance, owing to the presence of a dense crowd 
of long filamentous villi; it is of a vivid scarlet colour, owing 
to its vascularity, and has an odour much like that of raw 
beef. 
On dividing the uterus all down one side and turning it 
inside out under water the villi are beautifully seen. They 
clothe the whole organ so thickly—like the bristles of a 
broom or like a thick coarse fur—that the surface from which 
they spring is entirely concealed. In a square of a quarter 
of an inch (after contraction in spirit) there are about 210 
villi, and as the internal superficial dimension of the uterus 
(after contraction in spirit) is about 20 square inches, the 
total number of villi must be about 67,200. ’ 
Beneath (1) the villi, which constitute the mucous mem- 
brane, the wall of the uterus in transverse section shows, from 
within outwards, (2) a submucous stratum in which is a very 
distinct muscularis mucose of both longitudinally and cireu- 
larly disposed fibres—the former greatly predominant— 
