ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE FCETAL MEMBRANES IN THE CETACEA. 489 



membrane, our attention should especially be directed to the appearance pre- 

 sented by its free surface, to the arrangement of the proper utricular glands, 

 and to the discussion of the question, whether the villi of the chorion in the 

 placental area do, or do not, enter within the mouths of the glands. 



Eschricht had recognised that the free surface of the uterine mucous mem- 

 brane in the gravid porpoise, which he dissected, appeared " cellulosa vel 

 cribrosa." The form of the " cells " was " valde irregularis. Interdum quadratse 

 vel triangulares sunt, interdum rotundatse, ssepius oblongae unum punctum 

 elevatum irregulariter radiatim circumstantes " — a description which closely 

 applies to the depressions termed recesses, trenches, and pits, which I have 

 figured on p. 474 in the gravid Orca. It does not very clearly appear, from 

 his description, whether he had recognised the small cup-shaped pouches 

 or pockets opening into or leading out of these larger depressions, which I 

 have named the crypts ; so that I am inclined to think that Eschricht's 

 term " cells " must be taken as equivalent to my pits, recesses, or trenches, 

 rather than to my crypts. His account of the arrangement of the closely- 

 packed, branching, uterine glands, applies, in most particulars, equally well 

 to what I have seen in the Orca ; but from the statement, " ostia areolis 

 seu maculis laevibus insunt, quibus nullse omnino insident cellulse," he seems 

 to think that the glands open on the surface of the mucous membrane, 

 not in the " cells " in which the chorionic villi are lodged, but in separate 

 shallow areolae ; and he goes on to say, that for so great a multitude of gland 

 ramifications, there are not more openings on the surface of the mucous 

 coat than in the pig, and the openings are separated by intervals of one or 

 two lines. 



In the gravid uterus of a mare, where the foetus was about two feet long, 

 which I examined several years ago, I observed that the inner surface of its 

 mucous membrane was pitted with minute depressions, for the reception of the 

 villi of the chorion ; but unfortunately I omitted to notice the relation which 

 they bore to the uterine glands. In another uterus, in the sixth month of 

 gestation, the free surface of the membrane was crowded with multitudes of 

 crypts, not unlike those described in Orca. Opening sometimes within these 

 crypts, but at others on the ridges which separated different groups of crypts 

 from each other, were oval, or almost circular, orifices surrounded by a capillary 

 ring, which were evidently the mouths of utricular glands. In vertical sections 

 the glands were distinctly seen. In the deeper part, branched, tortuous, and with 

 diverticular off-shoots, but in their course to the crypt-layer they ascended almost 

 straight and vertically, so that they could be followed without difficulty, and 

 contrasted strongly, therefore, in this respect with the arrangement seen in 

 Orca. The crypt-layer was, as in the cetacean, much more highly vascular than 

 the gland-layer of the mucous membrane, but the vessels ascended to the crypt- 



