76 ON THE PLACENTAL STRUCTURES OP THE TENREC 



of mammae and the number of foetuses are by no means always in 

 exact correspondence in the class Mammalia. 



From the neighbourhood of the ovary a stout fibrous band 

 passes upwards to lose itself in the peritoneum, lying exteriorly to 

 the kidney, and in relation with the diaphragm. This structure is 

 to be seen in most female mammalia ; and a band, with homologous 

 connexions, exists in many male mammalia, both of ' testicondous ' 

 and of other orders. It has been seen by me in the tamandua ( Myr- 

 mecojohaga tetradactyld) and in the Pleropus, and also in the foetus at 

 full time of the pigtailed monkey (3Iacacus nemestrinus), and in 

 the human subject at the age of fifteen months, in each case 

 attached to the caput magus epididymis. It is, no doubt, the 

 remnant of the ligamentum diaphragmaticum, figured by Kolliker 

 (fig. 215, ' Entwickelungsgeschichte,' 1861), as connecting the 

 Wolffian body and the generative gland of the early embryo with 

 the structures in relation with the diaphragm. 



There is no ligamentum rolundum in the tenrec ; and indeed we 

 should not expect to find such a structure in a species the male 

 members of which have the testes permanently lodged in the 

 position in which they are primarily developed 1 . The rudiment, 

 however, of the ligamentum diajohragmaticum is often found co- 

 existing with the ligamentum rotundum, as, for example, in the 

 hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), and consequently it cannot be, as 

 has been asserted 2 , the homologue of it. 



In the tenrec, the ligamentum diaphragmaticum is continued on- 

 wards from the region of the ovary on to the uterine cornu, con- 

 stituting thus a ligamentum ovarii of anthropotomy. Upon the 

 compound cord thus constituted the ovary is not quite sessile 3 , but is 

 connected with it by a short cord which meets it at right angles. 

 The peritoneal capsule of the ovary is large and loose, opening by 

 a small orifice into the general cavity of the peritoneum. The 

 ovary itself has, from the small quantity of its stroma, the granu- 

 lated appearance so well marked in the shrew and hedgehog. 



1 C. G. Cams, 1. c, tab. ix. fig. 2. 



2 « Phil. Trans.,' 1850, 516. 



3 The ovary of the sow is somewhat similarly pedunculate (see ' Hunterian Cata- 

 logue,' iv. 2782), and so also is that of other animals, as the rat. 



