496 ON GENERATION. 



dispersed on every side in innumerable subdivisions to the very 

 edge of the mass. In the same kind of spongy parenchyma of 

 the spleen, the number of the arteries is also greater than that 

 of the veins. 



The exterior uterine vessels run to the uterus, as I have 

 said, not to the ovaries (testiculi) situated in the suspensory 

 ligament, as some suppose. 



I have remarked an admirable instance of the skill of nature, 

 in the bulge or convexity of the caruncles turned towards the 

 conception : a quantity of white and mucilaginous matter is dis- 

 covered in a number of cavities, cotyledons, or little cups ; these 

 are all as full of this matter as we ever see waxen cells full of 

 honey; now this matter, in colour, consistency, and taste, is 

 extremely like white of egg. On tearing the conception away 

 from the caruncles, you will perceive numbers of suckers or 

 capillary branches of the umbilical veins, looking like length- 

 ened filaments, extracted at the same time from every one of 

 the cotyledons and pits, and from amidst their mucilaginous 

 contents ; very much as we see the delicate filaments of the 

 roots of herbs following the stem when it is pulled out of the 

 ground. 



It is clearly ascertained from this that the extremities of the 

 umbilical vessels are not conjoined by any anastomosis with the 

 extremities of the uterine vessels ; that they do not imbibe any 

 blood from them, but that they end and are obliterated in that 

 mucilaginous matter, and from it take up their nourishment, 

 nearly in the same way as at an earlier period they had sought 

 for aliment from the albuminous humour contained within the 

 membranes of the conception. In the same manner, conse- 

 quently, as the chick in ovo is nourished by the white of the 

 egg through its umbilical vessels, is the foetus of the hind and 

 doe nourished by a similar albuminous matter laid up in these 

 cells, and not directly from the blood of the mother. 



These carunculaB might therefore with propriety be called 

 the uterine liver, or the uterine mammse, seeing that they are 

 organs adapted for the preparation and concoction of that albu- 

 minous aliment, and fitting it for absorption by the veins. In 

 those viviparous animals consequently that have neither carun- 

 cles nor placentae, as the horse and the hog, the foetus is nou- 

 rished up to the moment of its birth by fluids contained within 



