| OCR Text |
Show 298 MR. W. A. FORBES ON THE GREAT ANTEATER. [Mar. 7, but there is no constriction or valve at all at its junction with the vagina. It receives the Fallopian tubes, not at its supero-external angles as in Homo &c, but at a point about one third down its total length. These are not particularly long, nor much convoluted, and lie along the anterior edge of the broad ligament. The ovaries are completely covered by a peritoneal coat superiorly, but by their ventral faces open into a spacious peritoneal pouch, open anteriorly, in the floor of which is the very considerable aperture of the morsus diaboli, surrounded by the expanded extremity of the Fallopian tube. This is not much fimbriated, and is externally prolonged to meet the external border of the ovary of the same side. On this surface of the ovary may be seen a few scars, probably due to the eruption of Graafian follicles, as well as a couple of small clavate processes which depend freely from it into the cavity of the pouch. Towards the outer part of the broad ligament, and lying anteriorly to the ovary and round ligament, is a large " hydatid of Morgagni " nearly the size of a pea. The opening of the vagina into the urino-genital sinus by two distinct apertures seems to be characteristic (according to the statements of Owen * and Bapp 2) both of the Anteaters and the Sloths, though Pouchet considered it in his specimen as "sans doute une anomalie" (/. c p. 195). The latter author describes as the " uterus " what I have here considered to represent both uterus and vagina, whilst what he calls " vagina" is only so in a functional sense, being morphologically the urino-genital canal. Rapp also describes these animals as having a single uterus with two ora ("einfache Gebdrmutter mit doppeltem (rechten und linken) Mut-termund," I. c.p. 104). Nevertheless I see no reason for doubting the view adopted by Prof. Oweu, that the genital tube above the urethral opening represents in reality both uterus and vagina. The presence of a vaginal septum, a remnant of the coalescence of the primitively paired Mullerian ducts, in Myrmecophaga is a peculiarity shared, judging from Owen's account, by the genus Choloepus3 only amongst other families of Edentates. In the Indian Elephant there is, at least sometimes, a similar but more perfect septum dividing into lateral halves not only the vagina, but the uterus (here provided with a distinct os uteri) also4. In other cases this disappears completely, except externally, forming then the so-called " hymen " of Miall and Greenwood. In the genus Lagostomus, on the other hand, as first described by Prof. Owen5, the accuracy of whose statement I have lately had an 1 Anat. Vert. iii. p. 690. 2 L. c. p. 102. s " In the Unau (Tradypus didactylus) the rudiment of a uterine septum appears as a longitudinal ridge from the inner surface of the anterior wall in the unimpregnated state: in this species also the same condition having been already noted in Tradypus tridaciylus], the utero-vaginal canal communicates in the virgin animal by two distinct orifices with the short urogenital tract " Anat. Vert. iii. p. G90. 4 M. Watson, " On the Anatomy of the Female Organs of the Proboscidea " Trans. Z. S. xi. p. 116 &c. pl. xxii. fig. 1. 6 P. Z. S. 1839, p. 177; Anat. Vert. iii. p. 086. |
