Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/282

 their private parts, a membranous velabrum covering the vulva and meatus urinarms, which must be raised before the penis of the male can be introduced.

In animals that have a tail, moreover, parturition could not take place unless this part were lifted up ; and even the human female is assisted in her labour by having the coccyx anointed and drawn outwards with the finger.

A surgeon, a trustworthy man, and with whom I am upon intimate terms, on his return from the East Indies informed me, in perfect sincerity, that some inland and mountainous parts of the island of Borneo are still inhabited by a race of caudate human beings (a circumstance of which we also read in Pausa- nias), one of whom, a virgin, who had only been captured with great difficulty, for they live in the woods, he himself had seen, with a tail, thick, fleshy, and a span in length, reflected between the buttocks, and covering the anus and pudenda : so regularly has nature willed to cover these parts.

To return. The structure of the velabrum in the fowl is like that of the upper eyelid ; that is to say, it is a fleshy and mus- cular fold of the skin, having fibres extending from the circum- ference on every side towards the centre ; its inner surface, like that of the eyelid and prepuce, being soft. Along its margin also there is a semicircular tarsus, after the manner of that of the eyelid ; and in addition, between the skin and fleshy membrane, an interposed cartilage, extending from the root of the rump, the sickle-shaped tarsus being connected with it at right angles, (very much as we observe a small tail comprehended between the wing on either side, in bats). By this structure the vela- brum is enabled more readily to open and close the foramina pudendi that have been mentioned.

The velabrum being now raised and removed, certain fora- mina are brought into view, some of which are very distinct, others more obscure. The more obvious are the anus and vulva, or the outlet of the faecal matters and the inlet to the uterus. The more obscure are, first, that by which the urine is excreted from the kidneys, and, second, the small orifice discovered by Fabricius, " into which," he says, "the cock immits the sper- matic fluid," a foramen, however, which neither Antony Ulm, a careful dissector, has indicated in Aldrovandus, nor any one else except Fabricius, so far as I know, has ever observed.