MAMMALIA. -") 



Cavys, it would be only natural to expect some corresponding 

 peculiarity in the female parts ; but, however inexplicable it may 

 appear, the female vagina offers no uncommon structure. 



(856.) We have in the Hfft 333> 



last place to examine the 

 generative system of the 

 female placental Mamma- 

 lia, and thus to trace the 

 developement of this im- 

 portant system to its most j 

 complete and highest form. 

 In theMARSupiALiA,as 

 the reader will remember, 

 there were still two dis- 

 tinct uteri, that were ob- 

 viously the representatives 



of the oviducts of the oviparous classes. In the human female, 

 on the contrary, the uterus is a single central viscus, into which 

 the germs derived from the ovaria are introduced through the two 

 " Fallopian tubes" as the oviducts are now designated ; but we 

 shall soon see that the viviparous Mammals offer in the anatomical 

 structure of the generative system of the female so many inter- 

 mediate gradations of form, that we are almost insensibly con- 

 ducted even from the divided uteri of the Ornithorynchus up to 

 the most elevated and concentrated condition that the uterine 

 apparatus ultimately attains in our own species. 



In the female Rabbit, for example, we have a placental Mam- 

 mal that in every part of the organization of its reproductive organs 

 testifies its near affinity to the Marsupial type. The .ovaria 

 (Jig' 334, A:, /), 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. 



The oviducts (w, o,) or the Fallopian tubes as we must now 

 call them, are reduced in their diameter to very small dimen- 

 sions, and testify by their tenuity how minute must be the ovule 

 to which they give passage. To these succeed the uteri (e, f) 9 

 still entirely distinct from each other throughout their whole ex- 

 tent, and even opening into the vagina (g) by separate orifices, into 

 which the probes i, A, have been introduced. As far as its anato- 

 my is concerned, such a uterine apparatus might belong to a mar- 



