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Show 1867-] DR. A. MACALISTER ON GLOBIOCEPHALUS SVINEVAL. 477 takes place in the erect and not in the recumbent posture," "that the fore paws were not used for the transmission of the foetus, but to keep open the pouch ready for its reception, while the mouth would be the means by which it would be deposited therein, and, perhaps, held over a nipple until the mother felt the sensitive extremity grasped by the young one." I was led, also, to suggest, from " the ease with which the mother could reach with her mouth the orifices of the vagina and pouch," that the young might be so transferred from the one to the other. The superintendent of Lord Derby's menagerie, however, reported that the ' Bettongia? " backing as it were into a corner of her cage, in this situation produced the young one, which, after its birth, she took up in her fore paws and deposited in the pouch." Mr. Hill's observations, in which I am disposed to place more confidence, distinctly testifies to the lips or mouth as the instrument of transport, the fore paws aiding precisely in the manner observed in m y experiments. The Knowsley observation accords with Mr. Hill's in the circumstance of the foetus being dropped on the ground when expelled from the vagina: as may be inferred, at least, from the expression that "after its birth she took it up and deposited it in the pouch" (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1844, p. 163). Whether this circumstance of the parturition is constant, viz. the dropping of the foetus on the ground, or whether the foetus may, occasionally, be received by the mouth from the vulva, I am still disposed to regard as a matter for ulterior observations. But the main fact of the conveyance of the foetus to the pouch by means of the mouth may now be held as the more probable (at least the more usual, if not the constant) way in the genus Macropus.-R. O.] 2. O n some Points in the Anatomy of Globiocephalus svineval (Gray). By ALEXANDER MACALISTER, M.D., Demonstrator of Anatomy, Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland. Through the kindness of Dr. Carte, Director of the Natural History Museum of the Royal Dublin Society, I have had the opportunity of dissecting some parts of a Cetacean belonging to the above species, and in its structure I have found what I think are peculiarities worthy of record. The individual was a very young one, caught on the west coast of Ireland, near Ballina, north-west of co. Mayo, and when recent measured nearly 6 feet in length. The skeleton was but imperfectly ossified, the lateral and spinous processes of the vertebra being yet cartilaginous and flexible for the most part. Most of the soft parts had been removed before the specimen was sent up to Dublin ; but the pharyngeal and laryngeal apparatus was untouched, as likewise were the anterior extremity and a few of the spinal muscles ; it was of these few parts that I was enabled to make a careful examination. (In the accompanying woodcut (p. 478) the |