1906.] UN THE PLACENTA IN UNGULATES. 73 



February 6, 1906. 



G. A. BouLENGER, Esq., F.E.S., Yice- President, 

 in the Chair. 



Mr. Frederick Gillett, F.Z.S., exhibited a case of mounted 

 cubs of the Timber- Wolf {Canis occidentalis) whicli he had 

 obtained in the Province of Keewatin, Canada. He remarked 

 that this wolf though abundant in that district seldom showed 

 itself, being seen only occasionally in the winter and scarcely 

 ever in the summer. 



Dr. C. W. Andrews, F.Z.S., exhibited and made remarks upon 

 some restored models of the skulls and mandibles of Mmritherium 

 and Paloiomastodon. The models were prepared by Mr. F. O. 

 Barlow from the original specimens collected from the Upper and 

 Middle Eocene beds of the Fayum, Egypt, and now preserved in 

 the British Museum and the Geological Museum, Cairo. 



Dr. Walter Kidd, F.Z.S., exhibited lantern-slides of sections 

 of skin from the palmar and plantar surfaces of twenty-four 

 species of Maramals, and the plantar surfaces of seven species of 

 Birds. The functions of the papillary ridges and the papillary 

 layer of the corium in connection with the sense of touch were 

 alluded to. 



The following papers were read : — 



1. Notes on the Histology and Physiology of the Placenta 

 in Ungulata. By J. W. Jenkinson^ M.A., D.Sc, 

 Assistant to the Linacre Professor of Comparative 

 Anatomy, Oxford. 



[Eeceived November 27, 1905.] 

 (Plate III.* and Text-figures 27-33.) 



Our knowledge of the minute anatomy of the Ungulate 

 placenta may be said to have begun with the publication in 1882 

 of Bonnet's paper on the constitution of the so-called " uterine 

 milk " in these mammals. According to Bonnet, the uterine 

 milk of the Sheep is a yellow viscid mass like pus, and consists of 

 a granular coagulable matrix full of masses of degenerating cells 

 and nuclei, of red blood-corpuscles, and of leucocytes which have 

 emigrated through the uterine epithelium. It also contains 

 small rod-like or needle-shaped bodies — the "Stabchen" — of 

 an albuminous substance, and fat and cholesterin may be demon- 

 strated in it. 



As this author rightly insists, this material forms a, very 



* For expliinatiou of tlie Plate, see p. 96. 



