The present investigation is a comparative study on the develoP' ment of elastic lamellae of the femoral and axillary arteries in the human fmtuses. It included morphological study, micrometric methods dealing with the numher,
thickness and distensibility of the elastic tissue of both arteries.
The selective staining of elastic lamellae of the blood vessels was flrst achieved by weigert (1898) who introduced resorcine fochsin method. In addition Tanzer's orcein stain (Tanzer, 1891) had become one of the most famous techniques
to define the elastic tissue. Balo (1963) called some arteries like aorta innominate, common carotid,subclavian ancl its branches and the hypogastric arteries as elastic arteries since they have a large amount of elastic fibres. According
to Carleton (1945), the middle coat of large arteries is the site of deve_ lopment of elastic tissue. The tunics media contains circular, discon. tinuous, fenestrated elastic membranes (Ham, 195?; Abou-El-Naga,1963 and Tarkhan, 1965).Some workers counted the number of elastic lamellae in the aorta (Arey, 1963; BoIo, 1963 and Maximow and Bloom, 1957). Others studied the histogenesis of the elastic lamellae like Hueck ( 1920),Krompecher (1930 & 1931), H;alJ et aI (1952) and Gross (1949 and 1951) .