544 
PROFESSOR W. TURNER ON THE PLACENTATION OF THE APES. 
These corpuscles were arranged very definitely in rows, with their long axes parallel 
to the surface of the decidua ; sometimes the rows of cells were close together, but 
at other times not only the different rows, but the cells in the same row were 
separated by an imperfectly differentiated connective tissue. These cells were not 
aggregated into bundles, but the outline of each cell was distinct. In their form 
and appearance they bore a close resemblance to the fusiform corpuscles of involuntary 
muscular tissue (fig. 4). 
The spongy tissue was several tunes thicker than the compact layer, and owed its 
loose or spongy character to the numerous spaces in it. Some of these spaces were 
undoubtedly sections through blood vessels, for they contained a red injection which 
had been thrown into the vessels from the uterine arteries. Others again, and these 
the most numerous, were seen on section to be, in some instances, elongated spaces, 
in others spaces varying in shape and size, which were arranged in several tiers, 
irregularly superimposed over each other, and were evidently non-vascular. These 
spaces were separated from each other by trabeculae, which were sometimes broad 
bands of tissue, but at other times slender bars. Fusiform corpuscles, similar to those 
immediately subjacent to the compact layer of the mucosa, entered into the formation 
of most of the trabeculae, and hr some instances constituted their chief constituent, 
but at other times irregularly polygonal, and somewhat flattened cells with rounded 
nuclei were the predominant structures in the trabeculae. I saw no appearance of an 
epithelial lining to these spaces. 
We may now inquire into the nature of the non-vascular spaces in the spongy 
tissue. They were obviously natural spaces in the mucosa, and not produced in the 
act of making the section. 
Friedlander, Kolliker, and the other observers above referred to, regard the 
decidua vera as retaining its glands throughout the whole period of gestation in the 
human uterus, which by becoming greatly widened and convoluted give rise to the 
spongy character of the vera I have just described. The epithelium, they say, also 
degenerates and disappears from many parts of the widened glands, the disappearance 
taking place in those parts of the glands which lie nearest the surface, but hi the 
deeper spaces of the spongy layer patches of columnar or cubical cells have been seen 
by Kolliker and Leopold up to the end of pregnancy. I was not so fortunate as to 
see an epithelial lining, either complete or partial to the gland spaces, in my specimen 
at the fifth month, or in uteri at later stages of gestation ; and there can, I think, be 
little doubt, though we may regard the spaces as produced by the great dilatation of 
tubular glands, yet that the degeneration and loss of their epithelial contents must 
have impaired if not destroyed, at least in the later stages of gestation, their function 
as secreting organs. 
In the decidua vera of the Macctcus the glands had also become modified from the 
non-gravid condition. If the spaces referred to in the descriptive part of this memoir 
(p. 531) were glands, then their epithelium had disappeared, and the tortuous tubes 
