small recesses, and which exist for the reception of the divisions of a villous tuft
of the chorion, are produced by deep anastomosing offshoots from the primary strands
of membrane. The tubular orifices already mentioned, and some of which are shewn
as larger black dots on figure 4, appear to meto result either from hypertrophy of the
mucosa immediately around them, or from a contraction of the strands of radiating
fibres, but both causes may originate them. I have generally found that when
pressure was exercised on one of these orifices from without, by pressing the wall
of the uterus inwards, that the uterine mucosa becoming stretched exposed a smooth
spot at the base of the tubular recess. I have also frequently carefully slit them
open under the microscope and found a similar smooth surface in their depths, but
at the same time I have not unfrequently opened recesses and everted them by
pressure to find them terminating in no smooth area. When a bare surface does
occur at their bases, they are identical structurally not with the narrow bare tract
opposed to the chorionic area of the umbilical vessels nor with the smooth surfaces of
the os uteri internum and the Eallopian poles of the horns, but with the small bare
spots distributed generally over the surface of the gravid mucosa on which the
orifices of utricular glands may be observed. I am therefore disposed to regard
these tubular recessess as the equivalents of the “ funnel-shaped crypts ” of Prof.
Turner1 in Orca gladiator, and which he at first thought might probably be merely
the widened mouths of utricular glands. They appear, as I have said, to be bare
spots, the openings of glands, around which the interglandular substance of the mucosa
areas wM c t formed a series o f furrows parallel to th e former. Besides th e minute crypts there were
many infundibuliform recesses scattered over the mucosa. Many o f the latter when pressure was exercised
on th em from the outside o f th e womb were everted, and displayed at their bottoms round hare spots, one to
each recess, w ith strands o f m embrane radiating from its sides. In th e furrows already mentioned, numerous
glistening smooth spots were arranged in lines, a file of spots to each furrow, b u t others were irregularly
scattered on th e uterine surface, because th e linear arrangement w as n o t uniformly p revalent, although
i t w as general. These bare spots, when the uterine mucosa was n o t stretched, assumed the form of
shallow depressions, bu t w hen i t w as pulled out the ir smooth nature became more apparent, and in the
centre of almost every spot a small orifice could be detected b y the naked eye.
Besides these fine furrows and ridges parallel to th e lon g a xis o f th e horn, th e uterine mucosa w as
traversed a t irregular intervals b y clear g listen in g fine lines a t r ig h t angles to the former and separated
from each other b y intervals o f about h alf an inch, while others were much more remote from one
another. These transverse lines, when th e uterine wa ll was stretched, were seen to be composed o f a
linear series of minute smooth spots, each h avin g an opening in its centre, th e mouth o f an utricular
gland. I t is evident, therefore, th a t these bare spots, both in longitudinal and in transverse series, are
th e structural representatives o f th e bare spots in th e u terus of th e pig, th e standard o f. comparison for
diffuse placentae. Besides the bare spots and fine lines the surface o f th e uterus had n o bare areas a t the
poles of either horns, and more remarkable, there was no bare surface corresponding to th e extensive
branching nude surface o f th e chorion following th e umbilical vessels which I have already described.
In a two-humped camel; a t th e fu ll time, the uterus had a cryptose structure, as regular and beautiful
a s th e cellular m ass of a compound Bryozoan, bu t irregularly covered over w ith numerous bare glistening
spots, each p erforated b y a g landular orifice. There was no bare area a t either p ole of the uterus, but a
p ortion o f th e mucous surface of the Fallopian tube, owin g to the extension o f th e organ, appeared on its
w a ll; there was, however, an irregular limited bare area on the dorsal surface o f th e uterus a t the os
internum. The chorion was finely villous all over equally a t b oth poles, and there was no trace o f the
bare area o f th e chorion of Manis, Plátamstá-, Orcella, and the Ta/pvr, bu t i t was studded over w ith bare
spots corresponding to those o f the uterus.
1 Trails. Roy. Soc. Edin. 1871.
had become hypertrophied,—an alternative opinion also held by Prof. Turner.1
These spots on Orcella are undoubtedly the structural and physiological equivalents
of the bare spots on the surface of the gravid uterus of the lemur, pig, tapir,
and camel, and to the smooth intercryptal areas of the uterus of the mare described
by Turner,* and in part to the smooth surfaces distributed among the cryptose
areas of the uterus of Mams. Orca, however as Prof. Turner3 has pointed out,
differs in the free, surfaces of its mucosa being more uniformly cryptose than in
the pig, and more so, that there are no intermediate surfaces destitute of crypts
on which the glands can open, whereas in the pig4 and mare, and I may add from
personal observation in the tapir and camel, as well as in Orcella and JPlatmista,
the crypts are collected into definite areas with distinct smooth surfaces intermediate
to them. The distinction between the opening of the utricular glands of
Orca and Orcella is structurally important, because it does not exist between
Monodon monocerus as described by Turner* and Platanista as described further on
in this work. Orcella, Monodon, and JPlatanista, as Cetaceans, would thus appear to
have one type of diffuse placentation, whereas Orca chiefly differs from them in
the absence of smooth areas encircling the mouths of the Utricular glands.
As I have already stated, the injections of the uterine mucosa were unsuccessful,
so that I cannot say anything regarding the distribution of the vessels in the
walls of the crypts and eryptlets, but vessels were distinctly visible crossing the
bare spots, (Plate XXXV11, fig. 9).
In microscopic sections of the mucosa, some of these recesses were slightly
more open and empty than others, but these differences were probably produced
by manipulation. In nearly all the spaces, mucous corpuscles, granules, and lymphy
secretion, besides epithelium both of a cylindrical and tesselated character, were
abundant, and oily globules were not unfrequently commingled.
Connective tissue <md utricular glands.—The connective, nucleated, corpuscu-
lated uterine tissue. (PlateXXXVIII, figs. 6c and 11), subjacent to the crypt-layer,
was looser than in the non-gravid condition, and large vascular areas and channels,
(Plate XXXVIII, figs, 3, v, and 10), were met with here and there. But its most
pronounced character by far was the immense development of branching utricular
glands, (Plate XXXVIII figs. 10 and 11, ug), equally in both horns. They formed
a dense layer underlying the uterine mucosa, so dense that it could be dissected
from off it as a sheet of glands. To demonstrate the openings of the glands on the
uterine mucosa by actually tracing a gland tubule to its termination was a process
attended with considerable difficulty. Cutting out a square piece of the uterine
wall and fixing it slightly stretched on a leaded piece of cork under water with the
uterine mucosa downwards, the serous and muscular coat could be easily removed
from the glandular layer, and a gland tubule could be selected and traced to its
1 Lect. p. 48. * L . c., 40, fig. 5. 8 Ib id . p. 48.
* Turner, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. vol. xxxvi. p. 490; Ercolani, Mamin, dell’ Acad, delle Sc. de Bologna, 1873 ;
Turner, Lect. pp. 38-42.
* Lect. p. 60.