70 Translation from Purkinje 



§8 

 [ 1 <0 Concerning the movements of oviduct and 



infundibulum and their muscular mechanism. 



When you open a recently killed hen which has an already fully 

 developed egg in the uterus and you remove the intestines so that 

 the egg-bearing organs are fully exposed, you will observe the whole 

 oviduct and the uterus writhing in continuous peristalsis; especially 

 if you immerse it in warm water, the ruffled fimbriae which crown the 

 free margin of the infundibulum are curled by the most beautiful 

 alternating contractions and expansions. But if you seek for the true 

 seat of the movements by stimulating the parts of the oviduct you 

 will find it with little effort in the mesometrium. No one who looks 

 carefully will deny that this is provided with numerous unmistakable 

 muscle fibers.* Perhaps it will not be superfluous to devote one or 

 two lines to the description of this apparatus. 



In the laying hen the mesometrium is quite different from the 

 mesentery which merely conveys vessels to the intestine. It is a true 

 muscle or rather a muscular membrane, which to be sure also distrib- 

 utes vessels to the oviduct. Two parts of the mesentery are to be 

 recognized, an inferior and a superior. The inferior is inserted on 

 the lower surface of the uterus if we may so term the lowermost part 

 of the oviduct where the shell is formed and which plays the major 

 role in the laying of the egg. Here a cross-shaped, rather compact 

 plexus of muscle fibers (fig. 19, c) spreads out about the uterus from 

 both sides; at the posterior part of the uterus, where the vagina is 

 inserted into it, a rather slack muscular sac is formed, which at laying 

 encompasses the vagina dilated by the egg and helps in its delivery. 

 At the other end, however, it is dilated into a muscular membrane 

 which is reticulated with fibers that spread like a fan; its periphery 

 begins at the insertion of the oviduct into the uterus and ends at 

 the insertion of the posterior angle of the infundibulum into the 

 uterus, thus folding back on itself. 



Now the other, namely the anterior, angle of the infundibulum is 

 gathered into a rather compact elastic ligament, perhaps wholly mus- 

 cular, which is attached for the most part at the root of the penulti- 

 mate rib of the left side but elsewhere it is attached less conspicuously 

 [^11] by many delicate projections about the pulmonary tubes [poros aeri- 

 feros pulmonum] (fig. 19). In the midst of the ligament the upper 

 part of the wall of the abdominal air sac [sacci aeriferi abdominalis] 

 is attached on all sides (fig. 19, h). 



* [Footnote added in 1830.] See Ge. Spangenberg: Disquhitio [inaiiguralis ana- 

 tomica] circa partes genitales foemineas avium (Gottingen: 1813), p. 50. 



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