74 OF THE SEXUAL ORGANS. 



philosophical light, may be considered as a dependency of the tegu- 

 mentary laminae; that is to say, the mucous membrane constitutes 

 the most important and constantly present portion of them. In 

 the lower animals, as well as in those whose sexual system is in the 

 highest degree complex, the germs are always created at the bottom 

 of a mucous cavity, whether it consist of a simple excavation, or 

 constitutes a canal that is straight, tortuous, &c. However, the 

 generative cavily is sometimes composed of a doubled homogeneous 

 lamina, of equal thickness throughout its whole extent, as in worms, 

 and the species that have no uterus; sometimes, on the contrary, this 

 duplicature is at first very thin in one portion of its extent, becomes 

 in the next place very thick at another point, and gradually becomes 

 thin again in a third, as is the case in women. 



189. Although, in the human species, the generative apparatus 

 forms, as it does in brutes, only a long canal reaching from the 

 ovary to the vulva, it exhibits to us, nevertheless, one of the most 

 perfect of the secretory apparatuses. The ovaries constitute its 

 glandular portion, the uterus is the reservoir, and the vagina the 

 excretory duct; so that they may, in respect to their peculiar func- 

 tions, be divided into formative, productive, and transmitting organs 

 (the ovaria and tubes), into gestative organ (the womb), and into 

 eduetive, conjunctive, or copulative organs {the vagina and vulva.) 



§. vn. Tarieties in the Internal Org^ans of 

 Generation in Animals. 



190. A long tube, extremely thin, double, wound upon itself 

 within the body of the animal, and terminating in a sort of vagina, 

 performs all the generative functions in the lumbricoid worms. 

 Fishes possess enormous ovaries, which contain as many as two 

 hundred thousand ovula, are continued without interruption into the 

 oviducts or tubes, and have a directly external opening. The ova- 

 ries of reptiles resemble bunches of grapes, but of various lengths; 

 in birds they present numerous cells, in which the eggs are lodged; 

 the oviduct, always open and trumpet-shaped at its superior extre- 

 mity, terminates, below, in the cloaca, which supplies the place of a 

 vagina. The mammiferaj alone possess an uterus, but with the ex- 

 ception of that of the monkey, it is very different from the human 

 Avomb; yet their Fallopian tubes and ovaries difl'er only by slight 

 .«hades from those of women. Almost all the rodentia, the rumi- 

 nantia, the solipedes, the amphibia, &lc., possess a womb divided into 

 three cavities; a middle one, which represents the neck, and two 

 lateral ones, called the horns, which must not be confounded with 

 the Fallopian tubes. These horns, or adnterum, are generally very 



