In human ova of eight to twelve days this external membrane, the chorion, is already covered with small tufts or villi, and forms a ball or spheroid of one-fourth to one-third of an inch in diameter (Figs. 186–188). As a large quantity of fluid gathers inside it, the chorion expands more and more, so that the embryo only occupies a small part of the space within the vesicle. The villi of the chorion grow larger and more numerous. They branch out more and more. At first the villi cover the whole surface, but they afterwards disappear from the greater part of it; they then develop with proportionately greater vigour at a spot where the placenta is formed from the allantois.
When we open the chorion of a human embryo of three weeks, we find on the ventral side of the fœtus a large round sac, filled with fluid. This is the yelk-sac, or “umbilical vesicle,” the origin of which we have considered previously. The larger the embryo becomes the smaller we find the yelk-sac. In the end we find the remainder of it in the shape of a small pear-shaped vesicle, fastened to a long thin stalk (or pedicle), and hanging from the open belly of the fœtus (Fig. 194). This pedicle is the vitelline duct, and is separated from the body at the closing of the navel.
Behind the yelk-sac a second appendage, of much greater importance, is formed at an early stage at the belly of the mammal embryo. This is the allantois or “primitive urinary sac,” an important embryonic organ, only found in the three higher classes of vertebrates. In all the amniotes the allantois quickly appears at the hinder end of the alimentary canal, growing out of the cavity of the pelvic gut (Fig. 147 _r, u,_ Fig. 195 _ ALC_).
The further development of the allantois varies considerably in the three sub-classes of the mammals. The two lower sub-classes, monotremes and marsupials, retain the simpler structure of their ancestors, the reptiles. The wall of the allantois and the enveloping serolemma remains smooth and without villi, as in the birds. But in the third sub-class of the mammals the serolemma forms, by invagination at its outer surface, a number of hollow tufts or villi, from which it takes the name of the _chorion_ or _mallochorion._ The gut-fibre layer of the allantois, richly supplied with branches of the umbilical vessel, presses into these tufts of the primary chorion, and forms the “secondary chorion.” Its embryonic blood-vessels are closely correlated to the contiguous maternal blood-vessels of the environing womb, and thus is formed the important nutritive apparatus of the embryo which we call the placenta.