302 EXTERNAL GENERATIVE ORGANS, BY E. KLEIN. 



0'45 of a millimeter, and is inversely proportional to the suc- 

 ceeding muscular tunic. Its structure, however, differs some- 

 what in the child from that of the adult. 



In the child, both the mucous membrane and the septa of 

 the muscular tunic connected with it consist of a very delicate 

 homogeneous network, in the nodal points of which, at many 

 points in the newly born child, distinct cells containing nuclei 

 may be found connected with one another by short thick pro- 

 cesses, and everywhere also in connection with the tunica 

 adventitia of both the larger and smaller vessels. Trabeculse 

 composed of a fasciculus of delicate connective-tissue fibrils, 

 are moreover visible in this plexus, rendering it not improbable 

 that fasciculi of connective tissue proceed from the fibrillation 

 of the cell processes of this adenoid plexus. In point of fact, 

 in the adult, meshes of decussating fasciculi of connective 

 tissue occur, together with plexuses of elastic fibres. 



Numerous small conical papillae, which are smaller and 

 fewer in number in the upper and lateral walls than in the 

 lower, project from the surface of the mucous membrane into 

 the deep surface of the epithelium. 



Glands also occur in the mucous membrane, in the form of 

 branched tubes, presenting two or more dilatations, and bounded 

 by a structureless wall. The dilatations and the portion of the 

 tubes situated in the deeper part of the mucous membrane 

 are lined by a single layer of beautiful columnar epithelium, 

 which nearer the orifice changes into laminated transitional 

 epithelium, and at the orifice itself becomes laminated and 

 tesselated. 



These glands Littre's glands of the urethra are found 

 both in the lower and lateral wall of the pars prostatica, and in 

 the pars membranacea, where they are scattered over the whole 

 periphery, penetrating to various depths into the mucous 

 membrane, and, indeed, in part dipping between the vessels of 

 the great venous plexus, where they are invested by unstriated 

 muscular tissue, whilst they in part extend to the muscular 

 tunic. 



The muscular tunic at the root of the urethra is arranged in 

 two layers, an -internal circular and an external longitudinal 

 layer, both composed of smooth muscular fibres. 



