

ON THE PLACENTAL STRUCTURES OF THE TENREC. 75 



walls. The lower part of the vagina is one inch in length ; the 

 upper is one inch and an eighth. The interlocking processes 

 developed from the walls of the upper part leave a pervious passage 

 from below upward for about half the length of this part of the 

 tube ; the uppermost half, however, is entirely blocked up by the 

 formation of complete transverse septa. Upon one of these, at a 

 distance of three-eighths of an inch from the commencement of the 

 uterine cornua, an os tincae like projection a quarter of an inch 

 long, but ending blindly, is developed. Its presence may make it 

 doubtful whether the partition of the sexual canal, with the inter- 

 locking processes developed upon it, does not correspond to parts 

 both of vagina and of corpus uteri. Somewhat similar processes 

 are figured by C. G. Carus 1 in the Kinkajou (Cercoleptes cauclivolvu- 

 his) in the vagina alone, the corpus uteri having been left un- 

 dissected in the preparation there drawn ; and Leuckart speaks 2 

 of similar outgrowths being developed in the vagina of the Banx- 

 ring (Cladohates, sp. ?) during pregnancy ; whilst in the ordinary 

 ruminants and Llama (Auchenia glama), figured by Carus, (1. c. 

 fig. 5), they are confined to the corpus uteri. In the common pig 

 (Sus scrofd) similar processes to those in the tenrec are to be seen 

 occupying a similar situation 3 . 



There is in the tenrec a short corpus uteri above the closed 

 portion of the sexual canal. Of the two cornua opening into it, 

 the left one is three inches and a-half long, and the right four 

 inches. In the left cornu there were contained four foetuses, and 

 in addition to the utero-placental areae corresponding with them, 

 there were two patches of tumid mucous membrane over and 

 above, indicating apparently that two additional ova had been 

 attached there and aborted. There was one similar patch in the 

 right cornu, together with eight foetuses. In all, therefore, as 

 many as fifteen ova had been impregnated ; three had aborted, 

 and twelve might have been brought to the birth. As many as 

 twenty-one young ones are said to have been brought forth by the 

 tenrec at one time : it has twenty-four mammae ; but the number 



1 C. G. Carus, * Tabulae Anatomiam Cornparativam Illustrantes,' pars v. tab. viii. 

 %. 6, 1840. 



' Vergleichende Anatomie und Physiologie,' von C. Bergmann und R. Leuckart, 

 1855, P. 627. 



8 The same condition obtains in the rhinoceros and in the elephant. (See 

 1 Hunterian Catalogue/ iv. 2775, 2777 a.) 



