There is another and equally interesting point of view in which we may look upon this sub ject. Not only are the forms of spurious her maphroditism which we have been considering, capable of being traced backward to certain tran sitory types of sexual structure in the embryos of those animal species in which the malfor mations in question oecur,but they may he shewn also to present in their abnormal states repe titions of some of the normal and permanent conditions of the sexual organs in various species of animal beings placed lower in the scale of life. Thus the occasionally imperforate penis of the male hermaphrodite has been supposed to have an analogue in the naturally solid penis of some of the species of the genera Doridium and Hyalcra.* Its more or less grooved or by pospadie condition is similar to the natural type of the same part in some hermaphrodite Mollusca, as in the Planorbis and 1Iurex in its occasional diminutive size it approaches the general smallness of the partially fissured penis of most birds and reptiles ; and we find it in the Rodentia and Marsupiata tied down by a short prepuce in a way analogous to what is seen in some cases of severe hypospadias. In the sloth ( Bradypus triductylus) the penis is small and grooved in its lower surface, and has the urethra opening at its base ;! and in several of the male Rodentia the scrotum is also cleft, and has its two opposed surfaces smooth, humid, and free of hair, as in most cases of hypospadic hermaphroditism in man. In Ophidian and in most Saurian Reptiles, the male seminal ducts open at once externally, as in some male hermaphrodites, at the root of the fissured penis.
The fact of the testicle some time remaining, in cases of hermaphrodite formation in the human subject, within the cavity of the ab domen, presents to us in a permanent state their original but changeable position in the early foetus, and at the same time affords a repetition of their normal situation, in almost all the lower tribes of animals, and in the Cetacea, Amphibia, Edentata, and some Pa chydermata, as the Cape Marmot ( Hyrax) and Elephant, among the Mammalia.
The malformed clitoris in instances of spurious hermaphroditism assumes also, in its abnormal state, types of structure that we find as the normal condition of the organ in various inferior animals. Thus in female Cetacea and Rodentia, and in the animals included in Cuvier's order of Carnassiers, but more par ticularly among the Quadrumana, the clitoris retains as its permanent normal type that relatively larger size which we observe in the early foetus, and in female hermaphrodites in the human subject : and further, as is some times seen in such malformed individuals, the clitoris becomes partially traversed by the urethra, as in the Ostrich, Ernu,§ and Ant eater ;II and in the Loris (as we have noticed in a preceding page) and Maki, it is completely enclosed, like that of the male, in the body of the organ, forming a continuous and perfect canal through it.
NVe may here further observe, (though the illustrations should more properly belong to the next section,) that in cases of true hermaphro ditism also in man and quadrupeds, as well as in the above spurious varieties, there may be often traced in some portions of the abnormal structures a sexual type bearing a greater or less analogy to the corresponding parts of those inferior animals that are naturally andro gynous. Thus, in instances of true hermaphro ditism, the orifices of the sexual ducts or passages occasionally open into a common cavity, as is normally the case in some species of Doridium, Helix, and other Mollusca ; or the female oviducts or Fallopian tubes, and the male vasa deferentia, run closely alongside of each other without any communication between their canals, as in the Alypsia and most Gas teropoda. Indeed the occasional co-existence even of both testicles and ovaries in individuals among the higher animals would be only a repetitioo of, or retrogression to, the normal sexual type of those genera of animals that we have just named, and of the Planaria, Ces toidea, and other natural hermaphrodites.
In this way we see, that, (as in many other monstrosities,) the several varieties of malfor mation in the sexual organs occurring in spurious human hermaphroditism do not con sist of the substitution of an entirely new and anomalous type of structure, but are only repetitions of certain types of the same organs that are to be met with both in the human foetus and in the inferior orders of animal beings. The investigation of the whole subject shews us in reference to the sexual organs, what is equally true in regard to all the other organs of the body,—that their different stages of development in the embryos of man and of the higher orders of animals cor respond to different stages of their deve lopment in the series of animal beings taken as a whole ; so that here, as elsewhere, the facts of Comparative Anatomy are repro duced in those of Embryology, and both are repeated to us by nature on a magnified scale in the anatomy of the malformations of the part,—a circumstance amply testifying to the intimate relations which subsist between Corn partitive Anatomy, the anatomy of Embryonic Development, and that of Monstrosities. Indeed proportionally as our knowledge of malformations has increased, it has shewn us only the more strongly that the laws of forma tion and malformation,—of normal and abnor mal development, are the same, or at least that they differ much more in degree than in essence, and that the study of each is calculated recipro cally to illustrate and to be illustrated by the study of the other.