On the one hand, the PhD research reported in this MSc. thesis was one of the first attempts to use scanning EM to study the placental membranes of a viviparous reptile. However, the work is of very poor quality, and clearly was not supervised by faculty with sufficient expertise. The results are therefore unreliable, and the interpretations moreso. As one notable example, the thesis presents micrographs of cells whose apical surfaces evidently were deeply pitted through artifactual drying. The author interpreted these artifactual holes as membrane pores though which material gets in and out of cells. Enough said. ( )