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Show 138 MR. F. E. BEDDARD ON THE POUCH AND [Feb. 3, 4. On the Pouch and Brain of the Male Thylacine. By F R A N K E. B E D D A R D , M.AV Prosector to the Society. [Eeceived 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 l 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 2, in which the foetus of the male Opossum is stated to possess a trace of this pouch. There is a description of this structure illustrated by figures in another paper3 by the same writer, to which I have been able to refer. It is there stated that the male mammary foetus of Didelphis virginiana has a pouch as well as teats, but that there are no traces in the adult of either structure. The figure which Laurent4 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 subject5, but dealing with a large ' Todd's Cyclopedia, Article Marsupialia, vol. iii. p. 328. 2 " Reeherches Anatomiques et Pbysiologiques sur les Mammiferes Marsu-piaux," Annales Franc. d'Anat. et Phys. 1S39, vol. iii. p. 231. This paper is called "Extrails de plusieurs meinoires inserts dans la zoologie du voyage de la Favorite," &c. _3 " Reeherches 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. 4 PL 22. figs. 1, 1 a, lb. 5 O. Katz, "Zur Kenntniss der Bauchdecke und der mit ihr verkniipften Organe bei den Beutelthieren," Zeitschr. wiss. Zool. Ed. xxx\i. pp. ti] 1-670, pis. xxxviii., xxxix. |