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In the Marsupials the pouch shelters the young, which are born in an exceedingly imperfect state, minute, nude, and blind, with a "larval" mouth fitted only to grasp in a permanent fashion the teat, upon which they are carefully fixed by the parent. But even later the pouch is made use of as a temporary harbour of refuge: from the pouch of female Kangaroos at the Zoological Gardens may frequently be observed to protrude the tail and hind-legs of a young Kangaroo as big as a Cat, and perfectly well able to take care of itself.

In the Monotremata (in Echidna) there is a deep fold of the skin which lodges the unhatched egg, and into which the mammary glands open, one on either side. This structure is only periodically developed, and arises from two rudiments, one corresponding to each mammary area; but in the female with eggs or young there is but a single deep depression, which occupies the same region of the body as the marsupial pouch of the Mar-