The Evolution of Man, V.2, Ernst Haeckel [free ebook reader for pc txt] 📗

The further development of the limbs from this rudimentary structure takes place in the same way in all the Vertebrates according to the laws of heredity.

The embryonic development of the muscles, or ACTIVE organs of locomotion, is not less interesting than that of the skeleton, or PASSIVE organs. But the comparative anatomy and ontogeny of the muscular system are much more difficult and inaccessible, and consequently have hitherto been less studied. We can therefore only draw some general phylogenetic conclusions therefrom.

It is incontestable that the musculature of the Vertebrates has been evolved from that of lower Invertebrates; and among these we have to consider especially the unarticulated Vermalia. They have a simple cutaneous muscular layer, developing from the mesoderm. This was afterwards replaced by a pair of internal lateral muscles, that developed from the middle wall of the coelom-pouches; we still find the first rudiments of the muscles arising from the muscle-plate of these in the embryos of all the Vertebrates (cf. Figures 1.124, 1.158 to 1.160, 2.222 to 2.224 mp). In the unarticulated stem-forms of the Chordonia, which we have called the Prochordonia, the two coelom-pouches, and therefore also the muscle-plates of their walls, were not yet segmented. A great advance was made in the articulation of them, as we have followed it step by step in the Amphioxus (Figures 1.124 and 1.158). This segmentation of the muscles was the momentous historical process with which vertebration, and the development of the vertebrate stem, began. The articulation of the skeleton came after this segmentation of the muscular system, and the two entered into very close correlation.

The episomites or dorsal coelom-pouches of the Acrania, Cyclostomes, and Selachii (Figure 1.161 h) first develop from their inner or median wall (from the cell-layer that lies directly on the skeletal plate [sk] and the medullary tube [nr]) a strong muscle-plate (mp). By dorsal growth (w) it also reaches the external wall of the coelom-pouches, and proceeds from the dorsal to the ventral wall. From these segmental muscle-plates, which are chiefly concerned in the segmentation of the Vertebrates, proceed the lateral muscles of the stem, as we find in the simplest form in the Amphioxus (Figure 2.210). By the formation of a horizontal frontal septum they divide on each side into an upper and lower series of myotomes, dorsal and ventral lateral muscles. This is seen with typical regularity in the transverse section of the tail of a fish (Figure 2.346). From these earlier lateral muscles of the trunk develop the greater part of the subsequent muscles of the trunk, and also the much later "muscular buds" of the limbs.* (* The ontogeny of the muscles is mostly cenogenetic. The greater part of the muscles of the head (or the visceral muscles) belong originally to the hyposoma of the vertebrate organism, and develop from the wall of the hyposomites or ventral coelom-pouches. This also applies originally to the primary muscles of the limbs, as these too belong phylogenetically to the hyposoma. (Cf.

Chapter 1.

14))

CHAPTER XII(27. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ALIMENTARY SYSTEM.)

 

The chief of the vegetal organs of the human frame, to the evolution of which we now turn our attention, is the alimentary canal. The gut is the oldest of all the organs of the metazoic body, and it leads us back to the earliest age of the formation of organs--to the first section of the Laurentian period. As we have already seen, the result of the first division of labour among the homogeneous cells of the earliest multicellular animal body was the formation of an alimentary cavity. The first duty and first need of every organism is self-preservation. This is met by the functions of the nutrition and the covering of the body. When, therefore, in the primitive globular Blastaea the homogeneous cells began to effect a division of labour, they had first to meet this twofold need. One half were converted into alimentary cells and enclosed a digestive cavity, the gut. The other half became covering cells, and formed an envelope round the alimentary tube and the whole body. Thus arose the primary germinal layers--the inner, alimentary, or vegetal layer, and the outer, covering, or animal layer. (Cf.

Chapter 2.

19.)

When we try to construct an animal frame of the simplest conceivable type, that has some such primitive alimentary canal and the two primary layers constituting its wall, we inevitably come to the very remarkable embryonic form of the gastrula, which we have found with extraordinary persistence throughout the whole range of animals, with the exception of the unicellulars--in the Sponges, Cnidaria, Platodes, Vermalia, Molluscs, Articulates, Echinoderms, Tunicates, and Vertebrates. In all these stems the gastrula recurs in the same very simple form. It is certainly a remarkable fact that the gastrula is found in various animals as a larva-stage in their individual development, and that this gastrula, though much disguised by cenogenetic modifications, has everywhere essentially the same palingenetic structure (Figures 1.30 to 1.35). The elaborate alimentary canal of the higher animals develops ontogenetically from the same simple primitive gut of the gastrula.

This gastraea theory is now accepted by nearly all zoologists. It was first supported and partly modified by Professor Ray-Lankester; he proposed three years afterwards (in his essay on the development of the Molluscs, 1875) to give the name of archenteron to the primitive gut and blastoporus to the primitive mouth.

Before we follow the development of the human alimentary canal in detail, it is necessary to say a word about the general features of its composition in the fully-developed man. The mature alimentary canal in man is constructed in all its main features like that of all the higher mammals, and particularly resembles that of the Catarrhines, the narrow-nosed apes of the Old World. The entrance into it, the mouth, is armed with thirty-two teeth, fixed in rows in the upper and lower jaws. As we have seen, our dentition is exactly the same as that of the Catarrhines, and differs from that of all other animals (

Chapter 2.

23). Above the mouth-cavity is the double nasal cavity; they are separated by the palate-wall. But we saw that this separation is not there from the first, and that originally there is a common mouth-nasal cavity in the embryo; and this is only divided afterwards by the hard palate into two--the nasal cavity above and that of the mouth below (Figure 2.311).

At the back the cavity of the mouth is half closed by the vertical curtain that we call the soft palate, in the middle of which is the uvula. A glance into a mirror with the mouth wide open will show its shape. The uvula is interesting because, besides man, it is only found in the ape. At each side of the soft palate are the tonsils. Through the curved opening that we find underneath the soft palate we penetrate into the gullet or pharynx behind the mouth-cavity. Into this opens on either side a narrow canal (the Eustachian tube), through which there is direct communication with the tympanic cavity of the ear (Figure 2.320 e). The pharynx is continued in a long, narrow tube, the oesophagus (sr). By this the food passes into the stomach when masticated and swallowed. Into the gullet also opens, right above, the trachea (lr), that leads to the lungs. The entrance to it is covered by the epiglottis, over which the food slides. The cartilaginous epiglottis is found only in the mammals, and has developed from the fourth branchial arch of the fishes and amphibia. The lungs are found, in man and all the mammals, to the right and left in the pectoral cavity, with the heart between them. At the upper end of the trachea there is, under the epiglottis, a specially differentiated part, strengthened by a cartilaginous skeleton, the larynx. This important organ of human speech also develops from a part of the alimentary canal. In front of the larynx is the thyroid gland, which sometimes enlarges and forms goitre.

The oesophagus descends into the pectoral cavity along the vertebral column, behind the lungs and the heart, pierces the diaphragm, and enters the visceral cavity. The diaphragm is a membrano-muscular partition that completely separates the thoracic from the abdominal cavity in all the mammals (and these alone). This separation is not found in the beginning; there is at first a common breast-belly cavity, the coeloma or pleuro-peritoneal cavity. The diaphragm is formed later on as a muscular horizontal partition between the thoracic and abdominal cavities. It then completely separates the two cavities, and is only pierced by several organs that pass from the one to the other. One of the chief of these organs is the oesophagus. After this has passed through the diaphragm, it expands into the gastric sac in which digestion chiefly takes place. The stomach of the adult man (Figure 2.349) is a long, somewhat oblique sac, expanding on the left into a blind sac, the fundus of the stomach (b apostrophe), but narrowing on the right, and passing at the pylorus (e) into the small intestine. At this point there is a valve, the pyloric valve (d), between the two sections of the canal; it opens only when the pulpy food passes from the stomach into the intestine. In man and the higher Vertebrates the stomach itself is the chief organ of digestion, and is especially occupied with the solution of the food; this is not the case in many of the lower Vertebrates, which have no stomach, and discharge its function by a part of the gut farther on. The muscular wall of the stomach is comparatively thick; it has externally strong muscles that accomplish the digestive movements, and internally a large quantity of small glands, the peptic glands, which secrete the gastric juice.

(FIGURE 2.349. Human stomach and duodenum, longitudinal section. a cardiac (end of oesophagus), b fundus (blind sac of the left side), c pylorus-fold, d pylorus-valves, e pylorus-cavity, fgh duodenum, i entrance of the gall-duct and the pancreatic duct. (From Meyer.)

FIGURE 2.350. Median section of the head of a hare-embryo, one-fourth of an inch in length. (From Mihalcovics.) The deep mouth-cleft (hp) is separated by the membrane of the throat (rh) from the blind cavity of the head-gut (kd). hz heart, ch chorda, hp the point at which the hypophysis develops from the mouth-cleft, vh ventricle of the cerebrum, v3, third ventricle (intermediate brain), v4 fourth ventricle (hind brain), ck spinal canal.)

Next to the stomach comes the longest section of the alimentary canal, the middle gut or small intestine. Its chief function is to absorb the peptonised fluid mass of food, or the chyle, and it is subdivided into several sections, of which the first (next to the stomach) is called the duodenum (Figure 2.349 fgh). It is a short, horseshoe-shaped loop of the gut. The largest glands of the alimentary canal open into it--the liver, the chief digestive gland, that secretes the gall, and the pancreas, which secretes the pancreatic juice. The two glands pour their secretions, the bile and pancreatic juice, close together into the duodenum (i). The opening of the gall-duct is of particular phylogenetic importance, as it is the same in all the Vertebrates, and indicates the principal point of the hepatic or trunk-gut (Gegenbaur). The liver, phylogenetically older than the