ORCELLA. 397 



these coats horizontally. Elsewhere the blood-vessels pass directly through with 

 a moderate or relatively good-sized calibre, but as soon as they enter the proper 

 tissue of the uterine wall they break up into numbers of small capillaries. These 

 last as they proceed inwards and approach the interior mucous lining still further 

 split up, and, in divaricating ramifications, form quite a rich but minute net- work 

 or kind of capillary plexus, analogous to what Turner has observed in the gravid 

 uterus of Orca. 



The most interesting fact appertaining to this uterus is that I could nowhere 

 detect the slightest traces of utricular glands ; and in my search for these I passed 

 in review a very considerable series of microscopic sections taken from different parts 

 of the organ. Even where rudiments of uterine glands might be supposed likely to 

 be found, as in the neighbourhood of mucous crypts and depressions, their absence 

 was conspicuous, as is seen in Plate XXXYIII, fig. 7, representing a vertical section 

 of the left wall of the cavity of the uterus under consideration. 



As might be anticipated, in the case of the gravid uterus, a very different state 

 of things obtained. The walls had vastly increased in thickness, the constituents 

 of the muscular, the serous and the mucous layers in relative proportions, and there 

 was a corresponding development of blood-vessels. The internal surface of the uterus 

 was no longer smooth, but presented instead a highly spongiose character due to the 

 existence of numerous minute recesses with occasional larger tubular orifices. The 

 former appear as dots all over the surface of figure 4 of Plate XXXV, and in figure 5 

 they are seen to be divided and sub-divided into small secondary cryptlets. The 

 minute recesses or crypts are produced by a highly reticulated anastomosing net- 

 work of the fibres of the mucosa, generally outwardly radiating from a bare glisten- 

 ing spot as in the pig, tapir,^ camel, and Monodon, and as occurs also in Flatanista. 

 The strands of membrane so radiating ultimately blend with the outlying portions 

 of other and neighbouring areas of radiation. The cryptlets contained in these 



' In a gravid uterus of a Tapir, in whicli a foetus liad attained a length of 4 inches, the surface of 

 the chorion was quite destitute of villi, but when it was removed it was found to be covered by irregular 

 fine wavy folds. The uterine mucosa was perfectly free from a truly cryptose structure, but its surface 

 was irregularly, but profusely and minutely, covered over with exceedingly wavy ridges and by smooth 

 glistening spots which had a smoother surface than the rest of the mucosa. These spots when examined 

 with a hand lens presented a central orifice. They also manifested a distinct tendency to an arrange- 

 ment in long parallel lines in the long axis of each horn. In the uterus near the completion of pregnancy, 

 the surface of the chorion, which wholly invested the inner surface of the uterus, was villous throughout, 

 the villi consisting of two kinds, viz., very small villi with larger villi intermixed. The villi were 

 separated from each other by minute round bare spots and by longitudinal and transverse lines corre- 

 sponding to those of the uterus. There was a very extensive, perfectly nude, shining area along the course 

 of the vessels from the cord, extending fi-om the pole of the right (unfecundated) to that of the left 

 (fecundated) horn, and having a breadth of 3 inches in some places. This area was of the same nature 

 as that which occurs in Orcella, Platanista, and Manis. No bare area occurred at either of the poles, nor 

 could I detect any on the surface opposed to the os uteri internum. 



The uterine surface was very minutely, but profusely cryptose ; the arrangement of the strands of 

 membrane, however, producing the crypts was different from what I have observed in any other uterus. 

 Coarse strands of membrane ran for considerable lengths side by side with a marked parallelism 

 giving off branches anastomosing with each other, and from these finer branches defined innumerable 

 minute crypts on either side of the coarser strands which were at a higher level than the intervening 



