Lo a 
XII. Note on the Female Organs of Erethizon dorsatus. 
By ALEXANDER Merk, B.Sc., University College, Dundee. 
Axout a year ago the Museum received from the Zoological Society an adult female 
Canadian Porcupine, Hrethizon dorsatus. In making some Museum preparations of 
the animal’s viscera, we were struck by the characters of the uro-genital organs, in 
connection with which remains of the WoLrrian Body and its duct were unusually 
conspicuous. 
The annexed drawing scarcely requires description. The uteri are, as in the 
Rabbit, completely separate. Parallel to each, in the broad ligament of the uterus, 
runs a fine undulated tube, which thins away and is lost above on the hilus of the 
kidney and below on the wall of the urethra, close to the neck of the bladder. 
This tube is the duct of GAERTNER, the persistent vestige of the WoLFFIAN duct. 
With this duct, along the greater part of its course, are connected about twenty 
lateral diverticula, sometimes branching, sometimes slightly anastomosing with one 
another, but generally simple, whose distal ends lose themselves in the neighbour- 
hood of the ovary, on the walls of the uterus, and on the upper portion of the 
vagina. These represent the segmental tubules of the Wourrian Body, not 
gathered together into an irregular clustered parovarium and paroophoron, but 
regularly arranged in a longitudinal and very primitive-looking series. The exten- 
sion of the duct of GAERTNER inferiorly on to the neck of the bladder is in accordance 
with the known embryological connection between the lower ends of the WoLFFIAN 
duct and of the ureter ; but its extension upwards to the hilus of the kidney is not ~ 
to be explained so easily. 
None of the other mammals, such as the Pig, the Guinea-pig, various 
Ruminants, Rodents, &c., in which the duct of GAERTNER and its correlated 
structures have been described, shows, so far as is known to us, the parts in so 
complete and primitive a condition as here. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
k. kidney. u.bl. urinary bladder. 
Ov. ovary. ur. ureter. 
PP rectum. ut. uterus. 
urethra. v. vagina. 
W.D. WotFFtan duct, or duct of GAERTNER. 
