468 PROFESSOR TURNER ON THE GRAVID UTERUS AND 



cells seen on the surface of the uterine mucous membrane, which surface was 

 very vascular. He also observed a layer of branching uterine glands, which 

 were so numerous and so closely set together that it was difficult to trace 

 out single specimens. The mouths of these glands opened into areolae on the 

 uterine mucous surface, and he believes that their secretion is taken up by the 

 veins of the villi of the chorion, which are in apposition with these mouths, and 

 that the nutrition of the foetus is sufficiently provided for by the absorption of 

 this secretion. 



Professor Owen, in a note to John Hunter's description of the parts of 

 generation of the cetacea,"* states that the allantois is co-extensive in its 

 development with the chorion, and that both extend into the horns of the 

 uterus. The foetus has neither placenta nor cotyledons ; but, as in the hog and 

 camel, the general vascularity of the chorion is subservient to its nutrition and 

 respiration. In a foot-note on a previous page (70), he had characterised the 

 placenta in the sow and the mare as diffused over nearly the whole surface of 

 the chorion. In the catalogue of the comparative anatomy specimens in the 

 Museum of the College of Surgeons, t he mentions the presence of peduncu- 

 lated corpuscles of the amnios on the umbilical cord of a foetal dolphin (1). 

 delphis). 



Dr C. D. Meigs, in the course of some observations on the reproductive 

 organs and the foetus of Delphinus nesermak,\ observed the plicated arrange- 

 ment of the uterine mucous membrane, and of the corresponding surface 

 of the chorion, the projections and sulci of the one being accurately adapted to 

 the sulci and projections of the other, so that the real surface of contact very 

 much exceeded the apparent surface. The foetus was developed in the left 

 uterine cornu, which was larger than the right, though the latter was partially 

 developed by the intrusion into its cavity of the chorion and allantois. The 

 amniotic outgrowths are figured on the umbilical cord, but are not described. 



Professor Rolleston also directed attention to the prolongation of the 

 membranes of a solitary cetacean embryo, § which he had examined, " from one 

 cornu round into the other, and projecting by a coecal extremity into a 

 short corpus uteri." He observed and described filiform outgrowths of 

 the amnion, where it invested the umbilical cord, and pointed out that the 

 cornual ends of the cetacean membranes were bare and glabrous as compared 

 with the villous character of the rest of the chorion. 



* Collected works, Palmer's Edition, vol. iv. p. 390. 1837. 



+ Vol. v. p. 200. 1840. Comp. Anat. of Vertebrates, vol. iii. p. 732. 



| Journal Academy Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1849, vol. i. p. 267. I have not seen 

 this paper, and am indebted to my friend Dr Rolleston for the above abstract of its contents. In 

 a paper in the Proceedings of the same Academy, vol. iv., 7th August 1849, Dr Meigs related some 

 experiments made to ascertain the effects of deep-sea pressure on the uterus of the cetacea. 



§ Trans. Zool. Soc. 1866, v. p. 307. The species was not determined. 



