PROFESSOR TURNER ON THE PLACENTATION OF THE SLOTHS. 91 
the original drawings of the chorion and uterine glands, and the specimen itself 
as it had been dissected by him, and to supplement his description by the fol- 
lowing particulars. Although the preparation had now been for many years in 
spirit of wine, yet I had no difficulty in recognising the diffused arrangement of the 
fine villi of the chorion and the elongated band free from villi, such as Dr SHARPEY 
had described. In its general aspect the villous surface resembled the appear- 
ance which I had seen and described in Balenoptera and Orca,* though the ridges, 
folds, and villi of the chorion were finer than those seen in the Cetacea. The 
condition and age of the specimen were such as to render it impossible to make 
a satisfactory microscopic examination of the structure of the villi. The two 
extremities of the elongated chorion were unequal in capacity, and the non- 
villous band extended in closer proximity to the more dilated than to the 
narrower pole of the chorion. In the more dilated end, part of the foetus had, 
in all likelihood, been lodged ; and it is probable that the poles of the chorion had 
been contained in two pouch-like recesses about the size of walnuts, one situated 
at each lateral extremity of the transversely elongated uterus. Each communi- 
cated freely with the general cavity of the uterus by an orifice somewhat less in 
diameter than that of the pouch itself, and was lined by a prolongation of the 
uterine mucosa. Into the outer end of each pouch the very fine orifice of the 
Fallopian tube opened.t I examined carefully the poles of the chorion to ascer- 
tain if a spot bare of villi, similar to what I had seen in Orca and in the mare, 
existed. At the narrower end the chorion was torn, so that the examination 
was not satisfactory, but the more dilated pole was entire, and in it no bare non- 
villous spot was recognised, so that if, as I suppose, the chorion enters the 
pouch-like recesses of the uterus, the villi investing it would have a relation to 
the mucosa lining each pouch as the villi covering the body of the chorion have 
to the mucosa lining the general cavity of the uterus. I saw no stellate bare 
spot on the chorion corresponding to the orificium uteri similar to what I have 
described in Orca and in the mare. Branched, cylindriform utricular glands, 
as figured in one of Dr Suarpey’s drawings, closely resembling those I have 
figured in Orca, and containing plenty of epithelial cells, the form of which 
was not very distinct, though apparently columnar, could be seen without 
difficulty in the uterme mucous membrane, but I could not precisely ascer- 
* As described and figured in my memoirs in the Transactions of this Society, vol. xxvi. pp. 
207 and 467, 1871. 
+ The presence of these uterine pouches in Manis is not without interest to the human anato- 
mist, and may serve to throw some light upon the mode of production of some cases of so-called 
extra-uterine gestation, described by obstetrical writers, in the human female. Ut is not, I think, 
improbable that in some of the cases figured and described by Brescunr (Répertoire Général, 1826), 
the ovum may have been lodged in a pre-existing uterine pouch, and not, as he supposed, in the 
thickness of the walls of the uterus, and the same explanation may perhaps be given to Dr Braxron 
Hicx’s case in Trans. Obstetrical Soc. of London, vol. ix. p. 57. Cases which have been described as 
tubo-uterine pregnancies may also have had a similar mode of origin. 
VOL. XXVII. PART I. QUA 
