54 8 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



This latter scrotal shrinkage or contractile phenomenon 

 may conceivably, under active functional circumstances, 

 aid in the forcible excretion or ejection of the testicular 

 contents. 



The fibre-elastic and muscular fibres may be regarded 

 as mainly distributed in a double fan-shaped manner, so 

 to speak, over the two halves of the perineum, and 

 operating from the raphe centrally, both in its superficial 

 and deep extensions, they exercise the function of lessening 

 the superficial area of the scroto-perineal surface, and 

 hence must lessen the cubic quantity of the fluid and 

 plastic contents confined within it, including the testicular. 



In fact, it would seem, or it might be inferred, that the 

 testicular organisms are encircled by these structures, and 

 that they are peculiarly under their influence mechanically 

 in all their phases of functional activity and inactivity. 



We may, in connection with these remarks, regard it 

 as a strange coincidence that a raphe may also be observed 

 in the upper lip in certain people, as if to afford a more 

 firmly organised point of central attachment for the orbi- 

 cularis oris, in its function of contraction of the mouth 

 and upper lip ; but the occurrence, it seems to us, may also 

 point back to an early condition of threatened cleft in 

 embryonic or early foetal life. 



The perineum may be regarded if the foregoing views 

 be accepted not as a complicated series of dependent 

 layers of structure only, adapted for a floor to the pelvis, 

 with its contained organs, but as a highly organised 

 arrangement of parts, with anatomical mechanisms, for 

 the control of the great exits from the body, and with 

 physiological structures and functions of the highest order 

 for the maintenance of health and the propagation of the 

 species. 



Thus the functions of excretion from the cerebro-spinal 

 cavity, through the filum terminate, coccygeal glomerulus, 

 and peri- and endo-anal " modified sweat glands," the 

 functions of intestinal evacuation and micturition, with 

 the associated functions of testicular evacuation or excre- 

 tion in the male and parturition in the female, and the 

 organisms by which these offices are effected, all find 

 the " theatre of their operations " on, within, and through 



