138 MR. F, E. BEDDARD ON THE POUCH AND [Feb. 3, 



4. On the Poucli and Brain of tlie Male Thylacine. 

 By Frank E. Beddard^ M.A.^ Prosector to tlie Society. 



[Received January 31, 1891]. 



On the 5th day of February of last year the male Thylacine which 

 was purchased by the Society in 1884 died. Its death gave me the 

 opportunity of noting a few points in the structure which have not 

 been as yet described and figured, or have been only briefly and 

 incompletely dealt with. 



The Pouch. 



The specimen being a male, I was greatly surprised to find a 

 distinct though small pouch, which is shown in the accompanying 

 drawing (fig. 1, p. 139). On referring, however, to the literature of 

 the subject, I discovered that the existence of a pouch in the male 

 Thylacine, although unknown to me, had been previously noted. 

 Sir Richard Owen has thus described ^ it : — " In the male Thylacine 

 the rudimentary marsupium is retained in the form of a broad 

 triangular depression or shallow inverted fold of the abdominal 

 integument, from the middle of which the peduncle of the scrotum is 

 continued." 



This account is repeated in the ' Anatomy of Vertebrates ' by 

 the same author. 



Sir Richard Owen refers in his article " Marsupialia " to a paper 

 by Laurent ^, in which the foetus of the male Opossum is stated to 

 j)ossess a trace of this pouch. There is a description of this 

 structure illustrated by figures in another paper ^ by the same writer, 

 to which I have been able to refer. It is there stated that the 

 male mammary foetus of Didelphis vh-ffiniana has a pouch as well as 

 teats, but that there are no traces in the adult of either structure. 

 The figure which Laurent* gives is not at all unlike the drawing 

 of the Thylacine's pouch which I herewith submit to the Society ; 

 the scrotum depends from the pouch in a precisely similar way. 

 M. Laurent did not find the pouch to be present in the other 

 species of Didelphis which he examined. 



A recent paper upon the same subject ^, but dealing with a large 



^ Todd's Cyclopa?dia, Article Mai'supialia, toI. iii. p. 328. 



^ " Eecherches Auatomiques et Physiologiques sur les Mammiferes Marsu- 

 piaux," Annales Fran9. d'Anat. et Phys. 1839, vol. iii. p. 231. This paper is 

 called "Extraits de phisieurs memoires iuseres dans la zoologie du voyage de 

 la Favorite," &c. 



^ " Eecherches Anatomiques et Physiologiques sur les Mammiferes Marsu- 

 piaux," Mag. de Zool. 1837. This paper is repeated, with the Plates, in the 

 'Voyage de la Favorite,' 1839. 



^ PI. 22. figs. 1, la, 15. 



° O. Katz, " Zur Keuntniss der Bauchdecke und der mit ihr verkniipften 

 Oi-gane bei den Beutelthieren," Zeitschr. wiss. Zoul. Bd. xx.wi. pp. 611-671), 

 pis. xxxviii., xxxix. 



