538 
PROFESSOR W. TURNER ON THE PLACENTATION OF THE APES. 
lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of the Placenta, delivered at the Royal College 
of Surgeons of England in June, 1876, have not otherwise been published. 
Both in the Macacus and the human female the uterus is single and ovoid in form in 
its gravid condition. The gravid uteri of Hapale jacchus and Cercopitliecus sabceus 
figured by Rudolphi and Breschet possessed a similar form, so that there can be 
little doubt that the pregnant uterus has this shape throughout the Quadrumana. In 
the Lemurs, on the other hand, the uterus is divided into two cornua, and though in 
the later stages of gestation the non-fecun dated cornu becomes so compressed as to 
be scarcely visible on external examination, yet, as I have shown in a previous memoir,* 
when the uterus is opened it can be distinctly seen. 
In the gravid uterus of the Macacus, when the abdominal cavity was opened, and 
the organ examined without disturbing its position, not only the round ligaments and 
Fallopian tubes were seen at the lateral borders of the anterior surface of the uterus, 
but the ovaries were also distinctly visible. In the human gravid uterus, again, these 
structures are situated more at the sides of the organ, so that to obtain a complete 
view of them the uterus must be drawn either forwards or to one side. From 
this difference in their relative position it would seem as if in the human female 
the growth and expansion during pregnancy of the anterior wall of the uterus was 
greater than in the Ape, so as to throw these structures more towards the sides of the 
organ. 
In the Macacus the breech and not the head was the part of the foetus which 
presented at the os uteri, and in John Hunter’s case also it is stated! that the 
young one was born with the hind parts first. Neither Rudolphi nor Breschet, though 
they describe the characters of the foetus found in several gravid uteri which they 
examined, state the nature of the presentation. Observations have been therefore too 
scanty to enable one to say if the breech is the part which normally presents in the 
Apes, or if its presentation was exceptional in John Hunter’s and in my specimen. 
The arrangement of the foetal membranes in Macacus closely resembles that of the 
human placenta. 
The division of the placenta into two distinct and separate lobes is in accordance 
with what has been seen by other observers to be the rule in the tailed Apes of the 
old world. In the tailless Hylobates, also, M. Breschet has figured a two-lobed 
placenta, but in the Anthropoid Chimpanzee the placenta is single. In the human 
placenta, as is well known, the placenta is also single, but cases have occasionally been 
seen in which the organ has been divided into two separate lobes. Professor Hyrtl 
not only figures | two human placental where in each the division into two lobes is 
* “ On the Placentation of the Lemurs,” Phil. Trans., 1876. 
f Works, edited by Palmer, vol. iv., p. 72. 
+ ‘ Hie Blutgefasse der Menschlichen Nacligeburt.’ (Wien, 1870.) Hyrtl also figures a human 
placenta almost completely divided into three lobes, and refers to cases where the division into a still 
greater number of lobes has been seen. 
