United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Primo, the cyclostomes, whose jaws are fused into a flexible ring and whose gill openings are simply a large number of holes, an order consisting of only one family. Example: the lamprey." "An acquired taste," Ned Land replied. "Secundo, the selacians, with gills resembling those of the cyclostomes but whose lower jaw is free-moving.
The simple, spindle-shaped heart-tube, found in the same form in the embryo of all the Craniotes, is divided into two sections or chambers in the Cyclostomes, and these are separated by a pair of valves. The hind section, the auricle, receives the venous blood from the body and passes it on to the anterior section, the ventricle.
This first structure of the human heart, enclosing a very simple cavity, corresponds to the tunicate-heart, and is a reproduction of that of the Prochordonia, but it now divides into two, and subsequently into three, compartments; this reminds us for a time of the heart of the Cyclostomes and fishes.
We can say, for instance, that we have inherited the oldest organs of the body, the external skin and the internal coat of the alimentary system, from the Gastraeads; the nervous and muscular systems from the Platodes; the vascular system, the body-cavity, and the blood from the Vermalia; the chorda and the branchial gut from the Prochordonia; the articulation of the body from the Acrania; the primitive skull and the higher sense-organs from the Cyclostomes; the limbs and jaws from the Selachii; the five-toed foot from the Amphibia; the palate from the Reptiles; the hairy coat, the mammary glands, and the external sexual organs from the Pro-mammals.
Injury to the thyroid, especially in growing animals, is followed by profound retrogression or arrest of development in skin, skeleton and brain. In the fishes and the cyclostomes the thyroid is represented only by some small scrubby patches, little larger than the heads of pins, scattered along the aorta, the great blood vessels from the heart, and out a little way along each gill.
At the lowest stage of this group, in the Cyclostomes, we find for the first time the differentiation of the vasorium into two sections: a system of blood-vessels proper, which convey the RED blood about the body, and a system of lymphatic vessels, which absorb the colourless lymph from the tissues and convey it to the blood.
Passing now to the classes that make up the group of vertebrates, we meet first the lampreys or cyclostomes without jaws, and the others with jaws, such as the fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mammals, each class distinguished by certain definite characters in addition to the vertebral column.
The primary axial skeleton remains a simple chorda throughout life in the Acrania, the Cyclostomes, and the lowest fishes. In most of the other Vertebrates the chorda is more or less replaced by the cartilaginous tissue of the secondary perichorda that grows round it. In the mammals it disappears for the most part.
This vesicle divides at an early stage into an upper and larger and a lower and smaller section. The edges join together in the middle part of each fold, and separate from the utricle, the two ends remaining in open connection with its cavity. All the Gnathostomes have these three canals like man, whereas among the Cyclostomes the lampreys have only two and the hag-fishes only one.
Our lungs, trachea, and larynx are formed from the ventral wall of the branchial gut. These vesicles are found in all the Vertebrates except the two lowest classes, the Acrania and Cyclostomes. In the lower Vertebrates they do not develop into lungs, but into a large air-filled bladder, which occupies a good deal of the body-cavity and has a quite different purport.
Word Of The Day