640 SPECIAL HISTOLOGY. 



Animals, in Mem. of Americ. Acad, of Arts and Sciences," V. part 1, 

 1853; H. Luschka, " Die Append ienlargebilde des Hoden," in "Vir- 

 chow's Archiv," VI. 3, 1854.— DaC] 



B. FEMALE SEXUAL ORGANS. 



§ 203. The female sexual organs consist : 1, of two follicular glands, 

 in which the ova are formed — the ovaries — with the parovaria^ and the 

 two excretory ducts, Avhich, however, are not directly connected with 

 them, — the oviducts, or Fallopian tubes ; 2, of the uterus, for the re- 

 ception and nourishment of i\\Q foetus ; and 3, of the parts subservient 

 to the expulsion of the foetus, as well as to copulation — the vagina 

 and external genitals. 



§ 204. Ovary, parovarium. — The ovaries, ovaria, are constituted of 

 special tunics, and of a stroma containing the ova, or the parenchyma. 

 The former consist of a peritoneal coat, which covers all but the inferior 

 border, and of a firm, Avhite, fibrous coat, the tunica alhuginea s. propria, 

 :^ of a line thick, which closely invests the whole parencliyma, and is 

 intimately connected with it without any abrupt line of demarcation ; 

 but does not send any processes into the interior, like the correspond- 

 ing coat of the testes, with which, otherwise, it precisely corresponds 

 in structure. The stroma is a grayish-red substance, of tolerably firm 

 consistence, composed of a nucleated, tough, fibrous, 

 though not distinctly fibrillar, connective tissue, in 

 which are lodged the ovisacs and the vessels of the 

 organ. From the inferior border of the ovary, where 

 the vessels enter, and ovisacs are never situated, the 

 stroma extends, in the form of a compact lamella, into 

 the interior of the ovary, from which it then radiates, 

 in larger and more slender bundles, towards both sur- 

 faces and the free border of the organ, so that, in a 

 transverse section, a penicillar arrangement is pre- 

 sented by them. The ovisacs or follicles, usually termed Grraafian vesicles, 

 folliculi ovarii s. Crrafiani, s. ovi-sacci, entirely closed, round follicles, 

 from J to 3 lines in mean size (Fig. 263 a, b), are imbedded in the more 

 peripheral portions of the stroma, so that, in a section, at all events, of 

 well-developed and normal ovaries, the parenchyma separates, as it 

 were, into a medullary and cortical substance, the latter of which only 

 as it may be said, contains the follicles. Ovaries in that condition, 

 also, should alone be made use of, for the obtaining of a correct notion 



Fig. 263. — Transverse section through the ovary of a woman dead in the fifth month of 

 pregnancy : a, Graafian follicle of inferior, and b, of the superior surface, c, peritoneal 

 lamella of the lig. latum, continued upon the ovary, and coalescing with d, the t. albuginea ; 

 in the interior, two corpora albicantia (old corpora lulea) are visible ; c, stroma of the ovary. 



