PROFESSOR TURNER ON THE PLACENTATION OF THE SLOTHS. 93 
I received from A. H. GArrop, Esq., Prosector to the Zoological Society, 
the fresh carcase of a female Hoffmann’s Sloth, which had died in the Gardens 
early in the month of November. An injection of coloured gelatine was 
passed into the arterial system from the abdominal aorta, and the uterus 
was then removed from the abdomen. The uterus was 3} inches long by 
ths inch broad. The Fallopian tubes were slender, the ovaries the size 
of peas, and lodged in peritoneal pouches. The cavity of the uterus was 
remarkably large for a non-gravid organ, and through its somewhat con- 
stricted orifice which opened into the vestibule, the finger could be introduced 
into the cavity, which showed no subdivision into cervix and body (fig. 11). 
The mucous membrane both on the anterior and posterior walls was 
elevated into longitudinal ridges such as I have already described in the preg- 
nant uterus, but these ridges terminated about #ths inch from the orificium 
uteri, leaving a smooth surface of mucosa. The mucous membrane was very 
vascular ; the small arteries both in it and in the submucous coat presented 
a cork-screw like twist, the coils of which were close together, so that there 
can be no doubt that the curling arteries of the placenta pre-exist in the 
mucosa, and merely grow larger during pregnancy cotemporaneously with 
the development of the placenta. The veins were larger than the arteries, 
and serpentine in their course. The surface of the mucous membrane of 
the fundus uteri, and both horizontal and vertical sections through its thick- 
ness were examined with reference to the presence of tubular utricular glands. 
Distinct evidence of their existence was obtained, though they were much more 
difficult to see and much less numerous than in the pig, mare, cetacean or 
Manis; they were short tubes, and did not appear to give off more than one or 
two branches, which terminated in rounded closed ends. They did not lie 
perpendicular to the plane of the surface, for in vertical sections they were irre- 
eularly divided, and were arranged in groups, so that they were more numerous 
in some than in other portions of the fundus (fig. 12). Their orifices on the 
free surface of the mucosa, which were recognised with some difficulty, were 
nearly circular in form, and a somewhat elongated epithelium projected from 
the wall towards the centre, leaving, however, a small lumen; the polygonal 
ends of the epithelial cells were seen through the walls of the glands lying hori- 
zontally in the mucosa. Capillary loops surrounded the glands in the deeper 
part of the mucosa. In the smooth part of the mucosa, near the orificium, 
although a careful search was made, no glands were seen, and the arteries did 
not possess the corkscrew-like twist, so that from these structural differences 
this part of the mucosa did not present the same characters as that of the 
fundus uteri. The connective tissue of the mucous membrane contained numer- 
ous well-marked corpuscles, and its surface was covered by a layer of cells, 
only the ovoid nuclei of which could be defined with precision. 

