GENERATIVE ORGANS OF FEMALE RABBIT. 35 



male Rabbit should be held to represent merely the vagina of the female. 

 It is a sounder view probably to consider it, as stated above, p. 30, to 

 represent both vagina and uterus. 



The extent to which the vagina projects beyond the summit or 

 ' superior fundus ' of the bladder is a remarkable point of contrast in the adult 

 female Rabbit as compared with the adult females of most other species 

 of mammals, placental and other ; in the newly-born female however (in 

 which it may be remarked the parts in question are curiously similar to the 

 analogous and homologous ones of the male at the same age), these pro- 

 portions are exactly reversed, whilst in well-injected adult specimens the 

 superior vesical arteries are sufficiently obvious to remind us of their 

 functions in foetal life. 



The junction of the uteri, a, to the Fallopian tubes, at e, is marked by 

 the difference in calibre of the two parts of the continuous and tortuous 

 cylinders which they make up, and by the attachment to it of the ' liga- 

 mentum rotundum' which passes down to be inserted into the pubic 

 eminence, as also of the ' ligamentum ovarii ' and the * broad ligament V 

 The two uteri are entirely distinct from their points of junction with the 

 Fallopian, tubes up to their openings by separate or a tincae, one on either 

 side of the rudimentary median septum on the anterior wall of the vagina, b. 

 In the Bizcacha, Lagostomus trichodactyhis, a South American Rodent with 

 many points of affinity to the Marsupials (see Darwin, Origin of Species, 

 p. 379, 6th ed. 1872), what is a rudimentary septum in the Rabbit forms a 

 perfect division in the vagina for a distance of as much as one inch beyond 

 the ora tincae, constituting thus a transition towards the arrangements 

 characteristic of Marsupialia. (See Owen, P. Z. S. Part vii. 1839, 

 p. 77.) The uteri are similarly distinct, forming a ' uterus duplex ' in 

 Sciunis^ Arctomys^ Spalax, Bathyergus^ Echimys, Erethizon, Hydrochaerus 

 amongst Rodents, and in Orycteropus amongst Bruta ; they fuse into a 

 ' corpus uteri ' with cornua uteri superadded to it at a greater or less dis- 

 tance from the commencement of the vagina, forming thus a uterus bicornis, 

 in Mus, Cavia, Caelogenys, Dasyprocta amongst Rodents, as in most other 

 placental Mammals ; whilst even in the uterus simplex of Dasypus among 

 the Bruta and in that of the Primates, more or less of the embryonal 

 bifidity is retained by the production upwards and outwards of the angles 

 of the fundus uteri towards the Fallopian tubes, much as are the angles of 

 the uterus masculinus of the Rabbit shown in Fig. 4, b. 



In the lower part of the vagina, a short distance above its junction with 



1 It is instructive to compare such a preparation as this of these ligaments with such a figure as 

 that given by Dr. A. Farre (after Richard) in the Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, Supple- 

 ment, art. < Uterus,' p. 598, fig. 404; or that given by Prof. Allen Thomson in Quain and Sharpey's 

 Elements of Anatomy, ii. 1882, p. 707, fig. 608 ; or those by Henle, Handbuch der Menschlich. 

 Anat. ii. ed. 2, 1873, figs. 364, 374, pp. 474, 487* 



D 2 



