Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/251

Rh ova, and their size, locality, or age. The variation with regard to size is referable chiefly to a difference in the quantity of fluid im- bibed in different instances by the incipient chorion. Vesicles filled with transparent fluid are frequently met with in the Fallopian tube, very much resembling the thick transparent membrane of the ovarian ovum. These vesicles are probably uniinpregnated ova, in the course of being absorbed. The so-called " yelk" in the more or less mature ovarian ovum, consists of nuclei in the transition state and exhibiting the compound structure above described. The mass of these becomes circumscribed by a proper membrane. They and their membrane subsequently disappear by liquefaction, and are succeeded by a new set, arising in the interior, and likewise be- coming circumscribed by a proper membrane, and so on. This ex- plains why some observers have never seen a membrane in this situation. After the fecundation of the ovum, the cells of the tunica granulosa, that is, part of the so-called " disc," are found to have become club-shaped, greatly elongated, filled in some instances with cells, and connected with the thick transparent membrane by their pointed extremities alone.

That the thin membrane described by the author in his second series as rising from the thick transparent membrane in the Fallo- pian tube, and imbibing fluid, is really the incipient chorion, was then shown by tracing it from stage to stage, up to the period when villi form upon it. There remained, however, two questions unde- cided ; viz., whether the chorion is formed of cells, and if so^ whether the cells are those of the so-called " disc," brought by the ovum from the ovary. The author now states that the chorion is formed of cells, which gradually collect around the thick transparent membrane, and coalesce ; and that the cells in question are not those of the "disc" brought with the ovum from the ovary. The cells which give origin to the chorion are intended to be more particularly described in a future paper.

The existing view, namely, that a nucleus, when it leaves the membrane of its cell, simply disappears by liquefaction, is inappli- cable to any nucleus observed in the course of these investigations. The nucleus resolves itself into incipient cells in the manner above described. In tracing this process, it appears that the nucleus, and especially its central pellucid cavity, is the seat of changes which were not to have been expected from the recently advanced doctrine, that the disappearing nucleus has performed its entire office by giving origin at its surface to the membrane of a single cell. It is the mysterious centre of a nucleus which is the point of fecundation ; and the place of origin of two cells constituting the foundation of the new being. The germinal vesicle, as already stated, is the parent cell, which, having given origin to two cells, disappears, each of its successors giving origin to other two, and so on. Per- petuation, however, at this period, consists, not merely in the origin of cells in cells, but in the origin of cells in the pellucid central part of what had been the nucleus of cells.

The author shows that neither the germinal vesicle, nor the pel-