480 PROFESSOR TURNER ON THE GRAVID UTERUS AND 



The villi could be seen with the naked eye, but their form and general 

 arrangement were more distinctly recognised when examined with low magni- 

 fying powers. Considerable variety was displayed in the arrangement of the 

 villi, in their length, and in the number present in a given area. In many places 

 they were set in rows, so as to form parallel series of ridgelets. In other places 

 they were collected into little tufts, irregular in form and size, which sometimes 

 consisted of two, three, or four villi, but frequently of a much larger number. 

 Solitary villi were also met with, and in the irregular intervals of comparatively 

 smooth membrane, which lay between the bases of the tufts or ridgelets, it was 

 not uncommon, as Eschricht had also observed in his Phocoena, to see shorter- 

 stunted simple villi projecting from the general plane of the chorion. It is 

 evident that the crypts on the uterine surface, into which the stunted simple 

 villi had been inserted, must have opened directly on its free mucous surface, 

 and not into a trench or pit. As a rule the villi were compound in form, and 

 subdivided into three or more secondary club-shaped villi. The compound 

 villus not unfrequently swelled out at the free summit into a branching crown, 

 which, to adopt Eschricht's expression, formed a miniature representation 

 of the head of a cauliflower. 



The chorionic villi were composed of a delicate connective tissue, in which 

 numerous spheroidal and fusiform nucleated corpuscles were imbedded. Some 

 of these corpuscles were situated in the walls of the finer blood-vessels, but 

 others were proper to the tissue itself. A layer of spherical or ovoid corpuscles 

 was situated immediately within the free surface both of the simple villi and of the 

 secondary portions of each compound villus, and not unfrequently the limitary 

 membrane of the villus was slightly elevated immediately above the individual 

 corpuscles, so that the outline of the villus had a gently undulating appearance. 

 From their position these cells may conveniently be termed the sub-epithelial 

 corpuscles of the villus (fig. 6, a). The chorionic membrane between the bases ot 

 the villi consisted also of a delicate connective tissue, containing both spheroidal 

 and fusiform nucleated corpuscles. The fusiform cells possessed in many cases 

 very elongated poles, and had distinctly granular protoplasmic contents. Besides 

 those connected with the coats of the finer blood-vessels, others were situated 

 in the membrane itself. The spheroidal corpuscles were proportionally fewer 

 than in the tissue of the villi. No epithelial covering was recognised on the 

 chorionic villi, though it was carefully looked for, but it is very probable that 

 the epithelium had been shed, or rubbed off from their surfaces, before I 

 reached this stage of the examination. For not only had several days elapsed 

 after the death of the animal, but the chorion had soaked for some time in 

 warm water during the process of injection. 



When the chorion was cut into, along that surface which was adapted to the 

 convex aspect of the left uterine horn, the umbilical cord, allantois, amnion, 



