United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In all the higher animals a layer of cells makes its appearance between the hypoblast and the epiblast, and is termed the mesoblast.
These once commenced, and furthered by natural selection where favourable to life, would form the first term of a series ending in developed sense organs and a developed nervous system. Though it would enforce the argument, I must, for brevity's sake, pass over the analogous evolution of that introverted layer, or hypoblast, out of which the alimentary canal and attached organs arise.
While the above-described introversion is taking place, and before the inner surfaces of the resulting epiblast and hypoblast have come into contact, cells, or amoeboid units equivalent to them, are budded off from one or both of these inner surfaces, or some part of one or other; and these form a layer which eventually lies between the other two a layer which, as this mode of formation implies, never has any converse with the surrounding medium and its contents, or with the nutritive bodies taken in from it.
The wall of the planula is next pushed in on one side, or invaginated, whereby it is converted into a double-walled sac with an opening, the blastopore, which leads into the cavity lined by the inner wall. This cavity is the primitive alimentary cavity or archenteron; the inner or invaginated layer is the hypoblast; the outer the epiblast; and the embryo, in this stage, is termed a gastrula.
In the further course of development the epiblast becomes the ectoderm or epidermic layer of the body; the hypoblast becomes the epithelium of the middle portion of the alimentary canal; and the mesoblast gives rise to all the other tissues, except the central nervous system, which originates from an ingrowth of the epiblast.
From the introverted layer, or hypoblast, are developed the alimentary canal and those parts of its appended organs, liver, pancreas, &c., which are concerned in delivering their secretions into the alimentary canal, as well as the linings of those ramifying tubes in the lungs which convey air to the places where gaseous exchange is effected.
Here the fact which it chiefly concerns us to remark, is that of these two layers the outer, called in embryological language the epiblast, continues to carry on direct converse with the forces and matters in the environment; while the inner, called the hypoblast, comes in contact with such only of these matters as are put into the food-cavity which it lines.
Word Of The Day