476 PROFESSOR TURNER ON THE GRAYID UTERUS AND 



difficulty, for the stems of most of the gland-tubes, as they lay immediately 

 below the vascular crypt-layer, were, in many of these vertical sections, obliquely 

 or transversely divided, and consequently their precise mode of termination and 

 the position of their mouths could not be followed out (c, fig. 4). But in other 

 sections, where the stem of the gland-tube lay perpendicularly to the plane 

 of the surface, and where the knife had passed through its long axis, a short 

 length could be seen going to the deeper surface of the crypt-layer, and inclin- 

 ing indeed directly to the bottom of one of the deeper funnel-shaped crypts, 

 with the cavity of which its lumen was continuous (d, fig. 4). 



From the examination of surface views of the mucous membrane, more 

 especially when the vessels were injected, I was able to obtain also satisfactory 

 evidence that the glands opened into the deeper part of the funnel-shaped crypts. 

 For, on looking into these crypts through a binocular microscope, I not unfre- 

 quently saw that the deeper end possessed an opening which communicated 

 with the stem of a tubular gland. The direction of this opening was in most 

 cases oblique, so that the tube of the gland, immediately prior to its termina- 

 tion, lay with its long axis oblique or almost parallel to the bottom of the crypt, 

 and consequently was transversely or obliquely divided in many of the vertical 

 sections (fig. 4, c, d). The relation of the orifice of the gland to the bottom of 

 the crypt closely resembled the appearance figured many years ago by Dr 

 Sharpey in the pregnant uterus of the bitch.""" Additional evidence of the 

 communication of the glands with these deeper crypts was obtained hi some of 

 the specimens by observing a little plug, formed in all probability either of 

 epithelial cells or of the coagulated secretion of the gland, projecting from the 

 mouth of the gland into the bottom of the cavity of the crypt (fig. 10, a). 



Owing to the great complexity of the free surface of the uterine mucous 

 membrane from the multitude of crypts, it was not possible to say how many 

 gland tubes opened in a given area. It was evident, however, that they were 

 not so closely set together, but that several smaller cup-shaped crypts (fig. 4, e), 

 which did not receive glands, intervened between the deeper funnel-shaped 

 crypts with which the glands communicated. And it was also clear that the 

 number of what I have termed the stems of the gland tubes, which reached the 

 crypt layer, was very much smaller than that of the tubes in the deeper por- 

 tions of the gland-layer, so that the number of branches springing from each 

 stem must have been considerable. 



The glands were lined by a very distinct cylindrical epithelium, which was 



* Dr Baly's Translation of Muller's Physiology, p. 1576, figure 212. 



Dr Sharpey, to whom I showed my preparations during the meeting of the British Association in 

 Edinburgh in August of the present year, told me that in the uterus of a pregnant Manis, which he 

 had examined some years ago, he found an arrangement of the uterine glands almost identical with 

 that seen in this Orca, and that, like myself, he had experienced a difficulty in tracing the glands into 

 the crypts. 



