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 Nabelblaschen 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 nicjer), 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 Leporidse will not, I anticipate, be found 

 to be uniformly bilobular or multilobular ; and a reference to any work on midwifery* 

 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 

 placentae of the Long-nosed Monkey (Semnopithecus nasicus) amongst the lower Old- 

 World Simiadae, and of the Callithrix sciureus amongst the New- World Monkeys, as in 



' Abhandlungen Berlin Akad. Phys. Klass. 1828. " Bis hierher AUes also menschlich : aber nun die grosste 

 Abweichung zwar nicht der absoluten aber der relativen Zeit nach wem man das Nabelblaschen betrachtet." 

 ' Von Dr. Bemhard Sigismund Schultze, Professor der Geburtshiilfe in Jena. Leipsic, 1861. 

 =■ L. c. p. 470. 

 ' Cazeau, I. e. p. 191, where a figure of a cotyledonary Human placenta is given. 



