Passing by these particulars, however, let us turn to others that bear more immediately upon our subject. The uterine outlet or vulva, then, or the passage from the common cavity to the uterus of the fowl, is a certain protuberance, soft, lax, wrinkled, and orbicular, resembling the orifice of the prepuce when closed, or appearing as if formed by a prolapse of the internal membrane of the uterus. Now this outlet is situated, as I have said, between the anus and rump, and slightly to the left of the middle line of the body, which Ulysses Aldrovandi imagines to be for the purpose of “facilitating intercourse, and the entrance of the genital organ of the cock.” I have myself observed, however, repeatedly, that the hen turned the common orifice to the right or left indifferently, according to the side from which the cock approached her. Neither do I find any penis in the cock--neither, indeed, could Fabricius,--although in the goose and duck it is very conspicuous. But in its stead I discover an orifice in the cock, not otherwise than in the hen, although it is smaller and more contracted in her than in him; and in the swan, goose, and duck the same thing also appears, the penis of the male goose and duck protruding through this orifice during intercourse. In a black drake I noticed the penis of such a length that after intercourse it trailed on the ground, and a fowl following, pecked at it greedily, thinking it an earth-worm, as I imagine, so that it was retracted more quickly than usual. In the male ostrich I have found within this pudendal orifice a very large glans, and the red body of the penis, as we discover them within the prepuce of the horse, resembling a deer’s or a small neat’s tongue in form and magnitude; and I have frequently observed this organ, rigid and somewhat hooked during the coitus, and when entered into the vulva of the female, held for some considerable time there without any movement: it was precisely as if the two creatures had been fastened together with a nail. Meantime, by the gesticulations of their heads and necks, and by their noises, they seemed to notify their nuptials, and to express the great degree of pleasure they experienced.