ORDER CARNASSIER. 11 



ther ?" His object was to call the attention of scientific 

 men to the subject, and more especially of those who pos- 

 sess the means of investigation in those countries which 

 form the habitat of the animals. His observations are 

 highly interesting and important. On the pouch, he re- 

 marks, that it is not, in the adult female, a cavity of equal 

 capaciousness at all times. M. d'Aboville observed it to 

 increase in magnitude under the influence of the pheno- 

 mena of generation, and M. Geoffroy himself has observed 

 its relative dimensions in females of the same species. It 

 is small previous to sexual intercourse, large to excess 

 when the young ones are about to drop from the mammae, 

 and of a moderate size in the period immediately follow- 

 ing. Thus the pouch cannot be considered merely as a 

 second domicile, without spring or activity ; it is a true 

 place of incubation, extending by degrees, acquiring more 

 and more volume, as happens to every other domicile of 

 the foetus. Well, therefore, might it be called a second 

 uterus, and the most important of the two. 



This pouch, however, is external, and entirely formed 

 by the skin and its fleshy pannicle. Its composition is ex- 

 tremely simple. There are either longitudinal wrinkles on 

 each side, making a very imperfect sort of pouch, quite 

 in a rudimentary state, as in the didelphes of the sub-genus 

 Micoure, such as the Marmoses, the Cayopollins, the 

 Brachyuri, fyc, or there are ample folds round a central 

 point, which being fixed, obliges them to extend circu- 

 larly, and be confounded together in a large sort of cur- 

 tain. The mammary gland, placed in the centre of the 

 region of the abdomen, becomes, from its adherence with 

 the skin and its immutability, the point which commands 

 all the rest. All around it the skin contracts, folds over, 

 and is prolonged in a salient edge, small in front, consi- 

 derable behind, and of moderate dimensions on the sides. 



As in this unusual extension of the dermis, in its foldings, 



