Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/596

 dispersed on every side in innumerable subdivisions to the very edge of the mass. In the same kind of spongy parenchyma of the spleen, the number of the arteries is also greater than that of the veins.

The exterior uterine vessels run to the uterus, as I have said, not to the ovaries (testiculi) situated in the suspensory ligament, as some suppose.

I have remarked an admirable instance of the skill of nature, in the bulge or convexity of the caruncles turned towards the conception : a quantity of white and mucilaginous matter is dis- covered in a number of cavities, cotyledons, or little cups ; these are all as full of this matter as we ever see waxen cells full of honey; now this matter, in colour, consistency, and taste, is extremely like white of egg. On tearing the conception away from the caruncles, you will perceive numbers of suckers or capillary branches of the umbilical veins, looking like length- ened filaments, extracted at the same time from every one of the cotyledons and pits, and from amidst their mucilaginous contents ; very much as we see the delicate filaments of the roots of herbs following the stem when it is pulled out of the ground.

It is clearly ascertained from this that the extremities of the umbilical vessels are not conjoined by any anastomosis with the extremities of the uterine vessels ; that they do not imbibe any blood from them, but that they end and are obliterated in that mucilaginous matter, and from it take up their nourishment, nearly in the same way as at an earlier period they had sought for aliment from the albuminous humour contained within the membranes of the conception. In the same manner, conse- quently, as the chick in ovo is nourished by the white of the egg through its umbilical vessels, is the foetus of the hind and doe nourished by a similar albuminous matter laid up in these cells, and not directly from the blood of the mother.

These carunculaB might therefore with propriety be called the uterine liver, or the uterine mammse, seeing that they are organs adapted for the preparation and concoction of that albu- minous aliment, and fitting it for absorption by the veins. In those viviparous animals consequently that have neither carun- cles nor placentae, as the horse and the hog, the foetus is nou- rished up to the moment of its birth by fluids contained within