382 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
On the Parturition of the Marsupials. By Professor R. Owen. 
Proressor Owen has communicated to the Academy of Sciences 
in Paris the following observations on the memoir of M. E. Alix 
on the above subject, a notice of which appeared in this Journal for 
April 1865, p.-316. 
Having observed an aperture of communication between the me- 
dian vagina and the urethro-genital vestibule in Halmaturus Ben- 
nettii, M. Alix draws from this an argument against the passage of 
the foetus, in the parturition of the Marsupials, through the lateral 
vaginee, hack are certainly of extreme narrowness. Rad indeed, if 
we admit this physiology of these complex organs, it would follow 
that the anatomists who have denied this direct communication in 
other Marsupials were in error. 
But the function of the “lateral loops’’ (Cuv.) as spermatophorous 
canals, and that of the ‘‘fundus”’ of the third uterus (Cuv.) as an 
embryophorous canal, is far from being proved by the observation, in 
a certain species of Kangaroo, that the fundus en cul-de-sac becomes 
converted into a canal in direct communication with the urethro- 
genital vestibule. Such a physiological view is contrary to the law 
of the structure of the internal reproductive organs of the marsupial 
animals. 
The order Marsupialia presents a series of modifications of the 
vagina for the greater part of which the exclusively spermatophorous 
function of the lateral canals is inadmissible. In the small Opos- 
sums (e. g. Didelphys dorsigera, the Philanders, &c.) each true 
uterus terminates in a vagina, reduced to form a lateral loop, which 
is comparatively longer, narrower, and more twisted than in Macropus 
or Halmaturus, and there is no median vagina*. Here, therefore, 
the foetus must find its way out by the same extremely fine canals 
which give access to the semen. 
In the larger Opossums (e. g. Didelphys virginiana) each uterus 
terminates in a vagina, the commencement of which is widened out 
ceecally ; but these vaginee do not communicate with each other, nor 
does either of them extend to the urethro-genital vestibulet. 
In Macropus the vaginal diverticula intercommunicate, and the 
common cavity extends to the urethro-genital vestibule, but without 
opening into it. This I have ascertained in females of Macropus 
major, which had produced young at least twice. 
In Halmaturus the div erticulum not only attains the fundus of 
the urethro-genital vestibule, but opens into it, as has long since been 
demonstrated ft. 
* See Phil. Trans. 1834, p. 133, pls. 6 and 7. 
+ Catalogue of the Physiological Series, Hunterian Museum, 4to, vol. v. 
p- 154 (1838). 
{ By myself, in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1852, and Annals Nat. Hist. 2nd ser., 
vol. xiv. p. 450; also by Dr. Poelman in Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg. tome xviii. 
p. 599. 
