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It is, however, frequently given off from the epigastric; a matter of importance to be determined in cases of femoral hernia. Of 500 obturator arteries examined by M. J. Cloquet, 340 were furnished by the hypogastric, and 152 by the epigastric or crural. When it arises from the hypogastric, it passes forwards and outwards, and then turns horizontally into the cavity of the pelvis, to issue from this cavity by the opening left at the upper part of the obturator membrane. When, on the contrary, the obturator artery ariaes from the epigastric or the crural, it descends obliquely inwards, behind the os pubis, to the obturator foramen. At its exit from the pelvis, the artery divides into two branches, a posterior and an anterior, which are distributed to the muscles of the anterior and superior part of the thigh.