200 ON GENERATION. 



supply of the albumen, and extends downwards to the most 

 inferior and capacious portion the termination of the uterus 

 in which the chalazse, the two membranes, and the shell are 

 formed., i" 



The whole substance of the uterus, particularly the parts 

 about the plicae, both in its body and in its process, are covered 

 with numerous ramifications of blood-vessels, the majority of 

 which are arterial rather than venous branches. 



The folds which appear oblique and transverse in the interior 

 of the uterus are fleshy substances; they have a fine white or 

 milky colour, and a sluggish fluid oozes from them, so that the 

 whole of the interior of the uterus, as well the body as the 

 process, is moistened with an abundance of thin albumen, 

 whereby the vitellus as it descends is increased, and the albumen 

 that is deposited around it is gradually perfected. 



The uterus of the fowl is rarely found otherwise than con- 

 taining an egg, either sticking in the spiral process or arrived 

 in the body of the organ. If you inflate this process when it is 

 empty it then presents itself as an oblique and contorted tube, 

 and rises like a turbinated shell or cone into a point. The 

 general arrangement of the spirals and folds composing the 

 uterus, is such as we have already observed it in the vulva : 

 there is a ready enough passage for the descending egg, but 

 scarce any return even for air blown in towards the superior 

 parts. 



The processus uteri with its spirals, very small in the young 

 pullet, is so much diminished in the hen which has ceased laying, 

 that it shrinks into the most delicate description of membrane, 

 and then entirely disappears, so that no trace of it remains, any 

 more than of the ovary or infundibulum : nothing but a certain 

 glandular-looking and spongy mass appears in the place these 

 bodies occupied, which in a boiled fowl tastes sweet, and bears 

 some affinity to the pancreas and thymus of young mammiferous 

 animals, which, in the vernacular tongue, are called the sweet- 

 bread. 



The uterus and the processus uteri are connected with the 



back by means of a membranous attachment, which Fabricius 



designates by the name of " mesometrium ; because the second 



uterus, together with this vascular and membranous body, may 



' Fab. 1. c. p. 17. 



