302 PROFESSOR ROLLESTON ON THE 
sistence of the umbilical vesicle ; and Rudolphi' speaks emphatically of its supposed 
disappearance at the third month in the Human foetus as sharply differentiating its 
foetal structures from those of Mycetes, which, in other points, it so closely coincides 
with. This statement looks strange by the side of such a title to a recent monograph 
as the following :—‘ Das Nabelblischen ein constantes Gebilde in der Nachgeburt des 
ausgetragenes Kindes’ (‘ The umbilical Vesicle a constant Structure in the After-birth 
of the Child at full time’), or of a statement to the same effect as the heading of this 
paper of Dr. Schultze’s, which is made by Breschet? in his already cited memoir. 
Before leaving the subject of the Simious placenta, it may be well to state that the 
last-named author is inclined to suspect that further investigation will show that a 
naked-eye difference of arrangement distinguishes, as do so many other points of the 
like character, the Old-World from the New-World Monkeys. This point of difference 
is the possession by the New-World of a unilobed, and by the Old-World Monkeys of 
a bilobed placenta; and should Professor Breschet’s anticipation prove to be correct, 
we should have an additional, though slight, confirmation of the law which teaches us 
to expect to find considerable differences in structure and in habits between Old-World 
animals and their South-American representatives, and an additional, though slight, 
confirmation of the general value of the placental system from a classificatory point of 
view. I call the confirmation it would lend to these great principles but slight, firstly, 
because the anthropomorphous Apes, if we may judge, at least, from one of them, viz. 
the Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger), resemble the New- World Monkeys, and differ from 
the Old-World species, so much nearer to them in other structures and in place, in 
possessing a unilobed placenta; and, secondly, because such a point as the divarication 
of such an organ as a placenta, which is usually a single mass, into two or more naked- 
eye masses, seems to me but of small morphological importance. Such an example as 
that of the Ferret (Mustela furo), already detailed from Daubenton, deters one from 
assigning any very great value to the continuity or discontinuity of the cellulo-vascular 
mass, which it is not pretended has changed its relations either to allantois, to amnios, 
or to umbilical vesicle. The placenta of the Leporide will not, I anticipate, be found 
to be uniformly bilobular or multilobular ; and a reference to any work on midwifery4 
will show that very great varieties of the like nature may exist in the placenta of our 
own species. 
It would, however; be highly interesting to have further observations made as to the 
placente of the Long-nosed Monkey (Semnopithecus nasicus) amongst the lower Old- 
World Simiadz, and of the Callithrix sciureus amongst the New-World Monkeys, as in 
* Abhandlungen Berlin Akad. Phys. Klass. 1828. ‘‘ Bis hierher Alles also menschlich: aber nun die grisste 
Abweichung zwar nicht der absoluten aber der relativen Zeit nach wem man das Nabelblischen betrachtet.”’ 
* Von Dr. Bernhard Sigismund Schultze, Professor der Geburtshilfe in Jena. Leipsic, 1861. 
° L.c. p. 470. : 
* Cazeau, l. c. p. 191, where a figure of a cotyledonary Human placenta is given. 
