30 RICHARD ASSHETON AND THOMAS G. STEVENS. 
proportion of larger villi, which were implanted in larger and 
wider and more deeply seated crypts, passing for some dis- 
tance in an oblique direction subjacent to the layer of short 
crypts.” 
In the specimen of the dugong described by Turner the foetal 
placenta had been torn away from the maternal tissues in such 
a way that the layer of short villi were drawn out intact from 
their uterine crypts, but the longer, less numerous villi had 
been broken off and left within their crypts. 
Turner regarded this as abnormal, and believed that in 
normal parturition the longer villi would also come out, per- 
haps bringing some of the uterine tissues with them. He 
does not seem to have thought it likely that they should be 
naturally torn off and left, and absorbed by the maternal 
tissues, which is an alternative by no means improbable. 
Such an absorption of foetal tissues by the uterine tissues is 
common enough—as, for instance, in the case of the placenta 
of the mole, of Perameles (Hill), mouse (Jenkinson), etc. A 
similar absorption may frequently be noticed in rabbits, where 
embryos, if too numerous, are crowded out, die, and become 
absorbed together with the placenta. Such also is the pro- 
bable fate of the long villi of the elephant and dugong. 
Summary. 
1. The full-term after-birth of the elephant consists of a 
chorion from which spring many much-branched villi, which 
spread out in all directions into plate-like branches. ‘These 
end in (a) proximal foliaceous terminations, in which the 
foetal blood vessels ramify, which interlace with a complicated 
system of much larger blood channels filled with maternal 
blood, having well-defined but non-nucleated walls; (b) more 
distal lobate terminations, which are covered by a well- 
marked columnar or cubical epithelium — presumably the 
trophoblast — which are partly embedded in a kind of 
coagulum or detritus, and partly appear to hang loosely in 
irregular blood spaces without walls ; (c) the stems of still 
