490 PROFESSOB TURNER ON THE GRAVID UTERUS AND 



layer parallel to the tubes of the gland.""" Both Fabricius and Von Baer had 

 previously recognised small openings on the surface of the uterine mucous 

 membrane of the mare into which the villi of the chorion entered, but Professor 

 GuRLTt was the first to affirm that the villi passed in this animal into the mouths 

 of the glands. Ercolani describes numerous simple gland follicles, lined by a 

 pavement epithelium, as receiving in the mare the chorionic villi. But he 

 considers these follicles to be newly formed during pregnancy, and to be entirely 

 independent of the uterine glands, which, lined by their cylindrical epithelium, 

 and of uniform diameter, open by separate orifices on the uterine mucous 

 surface, and do not receive the villi of the chorion. 



In the pregnant sow the surface of the uterine mucous membrane is modi- 

 fied in accordance with the conformation of the corresponding aspect of the 

 chorion, as already referred to. Instead of presenting multitudes of crypts, 

 such as have been described in the whale, the surface is traversed by transverse 

 folds separated by intermediate furrows and fossae, so as to present an undu- 

 lating appearance. Shallow depressions, or areolae, which are to be regarded 

 either as the dilated mouths of the glands, or, as depressions into which the 

 glands open, are scattered over the surface. In an uterus which I examined, 

 where the foetal pig weighed 12 oz., about twelve of these areolae, correspond- 

 ing to the mouths of an equal number of glands, were situated on a portion of 

 mucous membrane -f^ths of an inch square. The vessels of this specimen had 

 been injected with vermilion, and the preparation corresponded in appearance 

 to the specimens described by Eschricht, that in injected uteri the areolae are 

 easily observed, as they are much less vascular than the surrounding portions 

 of mucous membrane. | According to Von Baer and Eschricht, little circular 

 or star-like vascular elevations of the surface of the chorion are attached to 

 these dilated orifices of the glands. 



In another pig's uterus, where the foetus weighed only 12 grains, the mouths 

 of the glands could be distinctly seen opening sometimes directly, at others 

 obliquely, and these openings were either on the plane surface of the mucous 

 membrane, or in shallow depressions, and not unfrequently plugs of epithelium 

 were seen projecting through the orifices, exactly in the manner I have described 

 in the pregnant Orca ; and the gland tube, as in that animal, did not pass verti- 

 cally to the plane of the mucous surface, but lay obliquely or parallel to it. The 

 intervals between the mouths of adjacent glands were so great that, examined 

 with a ^-inch objective, one, or at the most two, could only be seen at the same 

 time in the field of the microscope ; and the intermediate portions of the mucous 



* This specimen was injected in 1853 by that excellent anatomist, the late Mr John Barlow of 

 Edinburgh. 



t Handb. der vergleich. Anat. der Haus Saugethiere, p. 431. Berlin, 1860. 



I This diminished vascularity, as it seems to be, is probably due merely to the vessels being less 

 perfectly filled with the vermilion injection. 



