396 General Notes. [April, 
ing the morning hours and lasts only half a day. If copulation 
does not take place during this period, the female may rut again 
in the course of several weeks. Such females also from which 
the young are prematurely removed from the pouch or marsu- 
pium, allow themselves to soon again become pregnant. During 
the rutting period the walls of the uterus thicken very percep- 
tibly, and principally because of the enlargement of the uterine 
> lymph-spaces, in which the uterine glands then appear to be sus- 
pended and to float. 
“3 The fertilization of the eggs always occurs five days after 
copulation and at the lower end of the oviduct, where the latter 
widens into the uterus. In the vermicularly bent oviducts no 
spermotozoa are encountered. 
“4. Gestation lasts for exactly eight days; then thirteen days 
after copulation the young are transferred to the marsupium. 
Development accordingly proceeds with extraordinary rapidity. 
_ Only three days before birth do the amniotic folds close over the 
“te The egg is intermediate in character between the mero- 
>- ~ —_ yolk is never included by the umbilical vesicle (intestinal or ento- 
4 _ dermal cavity)! Remnants of the yolk persist up to the third 
DA day before birth. ai 
T “6. The fertilized but unsegmented egg measures almost 5" 
in diameter; in the course of twenty-four hours the blastodermic 
vesicle measures 1™™; in thirty-six hours 1.5™™; in sixty hours 
4™™ ; in seventy-two hours 8™ ; in ninety-six hours 14°" and 
on the sixth day after the commencement of segmentation 
much as 20™™ in diameter. 
“9. The blastodermic vesicles at first lie quite free and scattered 
in the uterus; on the fourth day (after the beginning of segmen- 
- tation), the blastodermic vesicle over the germinal area becomes 
very loosely adherent to the uterine epithelium. 
“8. In the marsupium of the mother there were never more 
than six young observed. But the number of embryos [found m 
the uterus], is invariably much greater and varies, according to 
_ the size and strength of the female, from nine to twenty-seven. 
PHYSIOLOGY.' : 
THE ACTION OF SULPHATE OF SPARTEINE ON THE HEART 
alkaloid sparteine was discovered by Stenhouse in Spartium SC 
_ parium, a species of Genista, in 1850. It is a bitter liquid, insolu- 
ple in water. Treated with an excess of sulphuric acid, it forms 4 
"This department is edited by Professor Henry SEWALL, of Ann Arbor, Michigan- 
The ; 
