83G MAMMALIA. 



although widely different as regards the size of the contained ovules 

 from those of oviparous animals, still retain faint traces of a botryoidal 

 or racemose appearance. 



Fig. 421. 



Uterus of the Babbit. 



(2481.) The oviducts (n, o), or the Fallopian tubes as we must now 

 call them, are reduced in their diameter to very small dimensions, and 

 testify by their tenuity how minute must be the ovule to which they 

 give passage. To these succeed the uteri (e, /), still entirely distinct 

 from each other throughout their whole extent, and even opening into 

 the vagina (g) by separate orifices, into which the probes (i, Ti) have 

 been introduced. As far as its anatomy is concerned, such a uterine 

 apparatus might belong to a marsupial Mammifer ; and even in the rest 

 of the sexual parts, obvious relations may be traced between the rodent 

 we are describing and the ovoviviparous quadrupeds. 



(2482.) It is true there are no longer two vaginae terminating in a 

 single cloaca! cavity ; but let the reader observe how nearly the vagina 

 of the Rabbit (fig. 421, a, b) approximates the condition of a cloacal 

 chamber. Anteriorly it receives the contents of the bladder (d, m) ; 

 while the rectum (s) terminates by an anal orifice (r) so closely con- 

 joined with the aperture of the vulva, that the anatomist is almost in 

 doubt whether the external opening might not be described as common 

 both to the vagina and intestine. Advancing from this lowest form of 

 a placenta! uterine system, it is found that the two uteri before their 

 termination become united so as to form a central portion common to 

 both, called the body of the uterus, through the intervention of which 

 they communicate with the vagina by a single passage, named the os 

 tincce ; still, however, the cornua uteri, especially in those tribes that 



