182 ON GENERATION. 



their private parts, a membranous velabrum covering the vulva 

 and meatus urinarms, which must be raised before the penis of 

 the male can be introduced. 



In animals that have a tail, moreover, parturition could not 

 take place unless this part were lifted up ; and even the human 

 female is assisted in her labour by having the coccyx anointed 

 and drawn outwards with the finger. 



A surgeon, a trustworthy man, and with whom I am upon 

 intimate terms, on his return from the East Indies informed 

 me, in perfect sincerity, that some inland and mountainous parts 

 of the island of Borneo are still inhabited by a race of caudate 

 human beings (a circumstance of which we also read in Pausa- 

 nias), one of whom, a virgin, who had only been captured with 

 great difficulty, for they live in the woods, he himself had seen, 

 with a tail, thick, fleshy, and a span in length, reflected between 

 the buttocks, and covering the anus and pudenda : so regularly 

 has nature willed to cover these parts. 



To return. The structure of the velabrum in the fowl is like 

 that of the upper eyelid ; that is to say, it is a fleshy and mus- 

 cular fold of the skin, having fibres extending from the circum- 

 ference on every side towards the centre ; its inner surface, like 

 that of the eyelid and prepuce, being soft. Along its margin 

 also there is a semicircular tarsus, after the manner of that of the 

 eyelid ; and in addition, between the skin and fleshy membrane, 

 an interposed cartilage, extending from the root of the rump, 

 the sickle-shaped tarsus being connected with it at right angles, 

 (very much as we observe a small tail comprehended between 

 the wing on either side, in bats). By this structure the vela- 

 brum is enabled more readily to open and close the foramina 

 pudendi that have been mentioned. 



The velabrum being now raised and removed, certain fora- 

 mina are brought into view, some of which are very distinct, 

 others more obscure. The more obvious are the anus and vulva, 

 or the outlet of the faecal matters and the inlet to the uterus. 

 The more obscure are, first, that by which the urine is excreted 

 from the kidneys, and, second, the small orifice discovered by 

 Fabricius, " into which," he says, "the cock immits the sper- 

 matic fluid," a foramen, however, which neither Antony Ulm, a 

 careful dissector, has indicated in Aldrovandus, nor any one else 

 except Fabricius, so far as I know, has ever observed. 



