FEMALE ORGANS OF REPTILES. 



585 



111 scaled Reptiles there is a clitoris or some representative 

 trace of the intromittent organ of the other sex. 



In Ophidia the ovaries, like the testes, are long, slender, and 

 disposed one, usually the right, in advance of the other, and 

 the ovisacs are developed for impregnation, in a single longitudinal 

 series in most species. The ovaries are connected with the begin- 

 ning of the oviducts by a broad fold of peritoneum. Each oviduct 

 commences by an expanded ostium, with a wide fissure, fig. 396, 

 a ; its tunics, at first delicate and transparent, increase in thickness 

 as the tube contracts : here its course is slightly wavy, but it soon 

 becomes straight, and, in the viviparous Serpents, expanded, ib. b : 



394 



395 



Oviducts and uteri, Salamander. 



Oviducts and uteri, Prog. 



in the Rattlesnake the lining membrane of the oviduct, prior to 

 the expansion, is disposed in minute parallel longitudinal rugae. 

 The correspondence of the ostia of the oviducts, a, with the 

 ovaries in position renders the left shorter than the right, and 

 in viviparous Serpents it usually contains fewer ova or young, as 

 in fig. 396. The cloacal terminations of the oviducts are in a 

 semilunar fissure, behind the orifice of the rectum. 



In the Lacertians the ovaria usually manifest a slight want of 

 symmetry in position, the right being a little more advanced than 



