478 ON GENERATION. 



myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility 

 make its way by attraction or injection to the seat of the 

 conception ? And repeated examination led me to the con- 

 clusion that none of the semen whatsoever reached this seat. 



EXERCISE THE SIXTY-EIGHTH. 



Of what takes place in the month of October. 



Repeated dissections performed in the course of the month 

 of October, both before the rutting season was over and after 

 it had passed, never enabled me to discover any blood or 

 semen, or a trace of anything else, either in the body of the 

 uterus or in its cornua. The uterus was only a little larger, 

 and somewhat thicker; and the caruncles were more tumid 

 and florid, and, when strongly pressed with the finger, dis- 

 charged small drops of blood, much in the manner in which a 

 little watery milk can be squeezed from the nipples of a 

 woman in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In one or two 

 does, indeed, I found a green and ichorous matter, like an 

 abscess, filling the cavity of the uterus, which was preternatu- 

 rally extenuated ; in other respects these animals were healthy, 

 and in as good condition as others which I examined at the 

 same time. 



Towards the end of October and beginning of November, 

 the rutting season being now ended, and the females separat- 

 ing themselves from the males, the uterus begins (in some 

 sooner, in others later) to shrink in size, and the walls of its 

 internal cavity, inflated in appearance, to bulge out ; for where 

 the cells existed formerly there are now certain globular masses 

 projecting internally, which nearly fill the whole cavity, by 

 which the sides are brought into mutual contact, and almost 

 agglutinated, as it seems, so that there is no interval between 

 them. Even as we have seen the lips of boys who, in robbing a 

 hive, had been stung in the mouth, swollen and enlarged, so 

 that the oral aperture was much contracted, even so does the in- 

 ternal surface of the uterus in the doe enlarge, and become filled 

 with a soft and pulpy substance, like the matter of the brain, 



