XVIII.—On the Gravid Uterus and on the Arrangement of the Fœtal Membranes in the Cetacea

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doi:10.1017/S0080456800008541

XVIII.—On the Gravid Uterus and on the Arrangement of the Fœtal Membranes in the Cetacea

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2013

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The distinguished French naturalist, Professor H. Milne Edwards, in the ninth volume of his valuable Lectures on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, published only last year, when referring to the fœtal membranes in the Cetacea, states, that much information is still required to complete our knowledge of that subject.

It may perhaps be advisable, before I commence to describe the results arrived at by my recent dissections, to give a brief account of the observations made by previous inquirers into this department of anatomy, so that we may more clearly recognise wherein our deficiencies lie, and the direction in which our researches ought to be conducted, in order to render our information as complete as possible.

Type: Research Article
Information: Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , 1871 , pp. 467 - 504

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080456800008541 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1871

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^{page 467 note *} Leçons sur l'anatomie comparée, vol. ix. note, p. 563. Paris, 1870Google Scholar.

^{page 467 note †} Second part, p. 257. Königsberg, 1837.

^{page 467 note ‡} De organis quæ respirationi et nutritioni fœtus mammalium inserviunt. Hafniæ, 1837Google Scholar.

^{page 468 note *} Collected works, Palmer's Edition, vol. iv. p. 390. 1837.

^{page 468 note †} Vol. v. p. 200. 1840. Comp. Anat. of Vertebrates, vol. 111. p. 732.

^{page 468 note ‡} Journal Academy Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1849, vol. i. p. 267. I have not seen this paper, and am indebted to my friend Dr Rolleston for the above abstract of its contents. In a paper in the Proceedings of the same Academy, vol. iv., 7th August 1849, Dr Meigs related some experiments made to ascertain the effects of deep-sea pressure on the uterus of the cetacea.

^{page 468 note §} Trans. Zool. Soc. 1866, v. p. 307. The species was not determined.

^{page 469 note *} Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, 20th December 1869, and Transactions for 1870.

^{page 476 note *} Dr Baly's Translation of Müller's Physiology, p. 1576, figure 212.

Dr Sharpey, to whom I showed, my preparations during the meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh in August of the present year, told me that in the uterus of a pregnant Manis, which he had examined some years ago, he found an arrangement of the uterine glands almost identical with that seen in this Orca, and that, like myself, he had experienced a difficulty in tracing the glands into the crypts.

^{page 479 note *} When I described and figured (Transactions of this Society, vol. xxvi., fig. 17) the only bare spot which I had recognised in the chorion of the fœtus of the Longniddry Balænoptera, I regarded it, in all probability, as one of the poles of the chorion, as the non-villous spot opposite the os internum was not then known. The further knowledge which I have gained from the examination of this Orca leads me now to think, from its size and the projection of the marginal fold, that it was a portion of the bare spot opposite the os uteri internum.

^{page 481 note *} These and the other preparations obtained from this uterus are preserved in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh.

^{page 482 note *} It may not be out of place to state that some portions of the chorion were injected with a blue-coloured gelatine from branches of the umbilical artery only, when the intra-villous plexus was readily filled; that others were injected with a carmine-coloured gelatine from branches of the umbilical vein only, when both the extra and intra-villous capillaries were readily filled; and that others again were injected both from artery and vein, until the coloured gelatines intermingled in the capillaries, and produced there a purple tint.

^{page 485 note *} Bulletins de l'Acad. Royale de Belgique, 2d Series, xx. No. 12.

^{page 486 note *} Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der Zoologie und vergleichenden Anatomie. Part ii. fig. 7.

^{page 486 note †} October 1871. This section and the final one, entitled “Physiological Conclusions,” have been re-written since the Memoir was read.

^{page 486 note ‡} In one specimen, I observed that the non-villous pole of the horn of the chorion which contained a fœtal foal about 2 feet long, was somewhat smaller than that of the Orca, but the bare spot in the opposite horn was considerably larger, being 2½ inches long by from ½ to ¾ inch broad, and with radiated bare processes passing off from its two ends. The bare spot opposite the os internum was twice as large as in the cetacean, and had several strongly-marked, radiating, non-villous processes. The presence of these bare spaces, or at least their exact position and signification in the chorion of the mare, seems to have escaped the notice of veterinary anatomists. Neither Chauveau nor Gurlt make any mention of them in their well-known treatises, and Franck (“Handbuch der Anatomie der Hausthiere,” Stuttgart, 1871), whose work is the most recent and fullest in detail of any which I have been able to consult, merely says, “in one or other horn roundish spaces are found, where the villi are sparse and feeble, and here the chorion has a semi-transparent appearance.”

^{page 487 note *} In one pig's uterus, I found that the membranes belonging to the embryo, situated lowest down in the left horn, actually did pass across the corpus uteri into the right horn, but this of course was not the case with the other ova.

^{page 488 note *} Anatomical and Pathological Observations, p. 54, plate 2, fig. 19, f. 1845, reproduced in Anatomical Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 18. Edinburgh, 1868Google Scholar.

^{page 488 note †} Mémoire sur les glandes utriculaires de l'uterus, et sur l'organe glandulaire de neo-formation, &c. I know this work, which was published at Bologna in 1868, only in the French Translation by Bruch and Andreini. Algier, 1869Google Scholar. Plate X. fig. 2, b.

^{page 488 note ‡} Cyclop, of Anat. and Phys., article Uterus, p. 718, fig. 485.

^{page 490 note *} This specimen was injected in 1853 by that excellent anatomist, the late Mr John Barlow of Edinburgh.

^{page 490 note †} Handb. der vergleich. Anat. der Haus Säugethiere, p. 431. Berlin, 1860Google Scholar.

^{page 490 note ‡} This diminished vascularity, as it seems to be, is probably due merely to the vessels being less perfectly filled with the vermilion injection.

^{page 491 note *} Op. cit. o. 57. 1845.

^{page 492 note *} He gives no description of the cetacean placenta.

^{page 493 note *} Henle and Pfeufer's Zeitschrift, vol. xxi.

^{page 493 note †} Op. cit., p. 1576.

^{page 493 note ‡} Hunde Ei, plate xiv.

^{page 493 note §} Weber, Rolleston, and Ercolani have pointed out the presence of utricular glands in the cat. I have also seen them in the badger, in which animal they closely resemble the figure and description given by Bischoff of these glands in the bitch. Ercolani denies the existence of two kinds of glands in the bitch's uterus, and states that only the utricular glands are present. Carl Friedländer has, however, recently made some observations (“Untersuchungen über den Uterus,” Leipzig, 1870), which reconcile the opposite statements of Sharpey and Ercolani. For he points out that, whilst in the quiescent condition of the uterus of this animal only the utricular glands are present, in the period of heat, when the mucous membrane is swollen, and its vessels turgid with blood, simple glands are also met with.

^{page 493 note ∥} Virchow's Archiv, xl. p. 350. 1867.

^{page 493 note ¶} To prevent misunderstanding I may state that Bischoff specially designates the short simpleglands of Sharpey as the mucous crypts, whilst the longer, branching, convoluted glands are the proper utricular glands. In my description of the uterine mucous membrane of Orca, I have employed the term crypts to designate all the pouches or pockets which receive the chorionic villi, whether according to the above hypothesis they are the simple glands uniformly enlarged, or the dilated mouths of the utricular glands.

^{page 493 note **} Histologie des Menschen und der Thiere, p. 517. 1857.

^{page 494 note *} Müller's Archiv, 1848, p. 79.

^{page 494 note †} Op. cit. p.346.

^{page 495 note *} Lectures on Gravid Uterus, p. 83.

^{page 497 note *} It is right to state that Professor Huxley, by whom the terms deciduate and non-deciduate were introduced, “by no means intended to suggest that the homologue of the decidua does not exist in the non-deciduate mammals.” —Elements of Comparative Anatomy. p. 103.

^{page 498 note *} Although the consideration of the placental affinities of the whale shows it to be more closely allied to the mare than to any other mammal, yet I by no means wish it to be understood that in the other organic systems a correspondence occurs between the cetacean and the soliped closer than can be seen between them and any other class of the mammalia. For in their osteological characters, as Professor Huxley has pointed out, the cetacea are allied to the true carnivora through the extinct Zeuglodon and the Seals; in the possession of a compound stomach and of a third bronchus, they resemble the Ruminants; in the “diffused” character of the chorion, in the presence of a vena azygos (Rolleston), and in the remarkable modifications of the cerebral and intestinal arterial systems, for an account of which I must refer to my memoir on the Longniddry Balænoptera, they are allied to the Pachydermata. A full discussion, however, of the relative value of these characters, as determining the zoological position of the cetacea, would be out of place on this occasion.

^{page 499 note *} Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, January 1841; and Physiological and Anatomical Researches, p. 325. Edinburgh, 1848Google Scholar.

^{page 499 note †} Although from the description which Professor Goodsir gave of these external cells, he undoubtedly considered them to be of the nature of secreting epithelium, yet he did not represent them in his diagram as situated on the free surface of the maternal placenta, but as separated from the space between the maternal and fœtal portions by a sharp line, as if a membrane intervened. How far he intended this line to represent a definite structure I am unable to say. If such were his intention, then the external cells would rather correspond in position to my layer of sub-epithelial corpuscles of the mucous membrane than to a free epithelium. Similarly his layer of internal cells of the villus corresponds in position, not to the epithelial investment, but to my layer of sub-epithelial corpuscles of the villus.

^{page 500 note *} See the Memoirs of Professor Goodsir, and Drs Arthur Farre and W. O. Priestley.

^{page 501 note *} It may be said, as an objection to the inference that the funnel-shaped crypts are the dilated mouths of glands, that in the mare some of the utricular glands open on the surface by circular orifices without exhibiting any dilatation, and that therefore the crypts into which the glands open are, like the other crypts, merely due to a folding of the mucous membrane at that spot. The difference in the character of the epithelial lining of the glands and crypts, and the similarity in the epithelial lining of all the crypts, may also be advanced as additional reasons why all the crypts should be regarded as formed after the same plan, and not by the dilatation of gland orifices.

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XVIII.—On the Gravid Uterus and on the Arrangement of the Fœtal Membranes in the Cetacea

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