The mucosal lining of the large intestine consists of simple columnar epithelium. This epithelium is not formed into folds or villi like that of the small intestine but has numerous, straight, tubular glands celled crypts. The crypts are somewhat similar to the intestinal glands of the small intestine, with three cell types-absorptive,goblet, and granular cells. The major difference is that, in the large intestine, goblet cells predominate and the other two cell types are greatly reduced in number