420 MINOT. [ VoL. ie 
are wide tubes running nearly straight through the upper part 
of the decidua and bounded directly by the decidual tissue ; 
they communicate below with a contorted cavity. Similar tubes 
appear in later stages and have been described as blood-vessels 
—see the next section. 
The cavernous layer contains numerous spaces, the areolz of 
Turner, 146, 547, who was uncertain as to their character, 
though he ascertained 
that many of them be- 
longed to the glandular 
system. In my specimen 
it is perfectly clear that 
all the larger areole be- 
long to the glands, which 
must be extremely dis- 
torted and distended to 
give the shapes shown 
in Cut 29. The thin dis- 
sepiments between the 
Cut 31.— Uterus one month pregnant; sec- 
tion of gland from cavernous layer, with the epi- areola are composed of 
thelium partly adherent to the walls. x 445 Connective tissue, the 
diams. long dark nuclei of which, 
Cut 31, are strikingly different from those of the cells of the 
compact layer, Cut 30. The areole present two extreme modifi- 
cations and all intermediate phases between these two. The 
smaller areolz are lined by a well-preserved cylinder epithe- 
Tium; or by one in which the cells are separated by small fis- 
sures; in other areolz the cells are a little larger, Cut 31, each 
for the most part cleft from its fellows, and some of them loos- 
ened from the wall and lying free in the cavity. The other 
extreme is represented in Cut 32; the size of the areolz is 
much increased,—compare Cuts 31 and 32,—both drawn on 
the same scale; the epithelium is entirely loosened from the 
wall, and the cells lie separately in the cavity which they fill; 
the cells are greatly enlarged, their bodies having three or four 
times the diameter of the cells in the small areolz; they have 
not the cylinder shape, but are irregular in outline: their proto- 
plasm is finely granular and stains rather lightly ; the nuclei are 
large, rounded, glandular, and with sharp outlines; they are less 
darkly stained than the nuclei of the epithelium of Cut 31. 
