The Evolution of Man Volume Ii Part 5

The somewhat similar Dicyemida (Figure 1.6) are distinguished from the preceding by the fact that their primitive gut-cavity is occupied by a single large entodermic cell instead of a crowded group of s.e.xual cells. This cell does not yield s.e.xual products, but afterwards divides into a number of cells (spores), each of which, without being impregnated, grows into a small embryo. The Dicyemida live parasitically in the body-cavity, especially the renal cavities, of the cuttle-fishes. They fall in several genera, some of which are characterised by the possession of special polar cells; the body is sometimes roundish, oval, or club-shaped, at other times long and cylindrical. The genus Conocyema (Figures 1.7 to 1.15) differs from the ordinary Dicyema in having four polar pimples in the form of a cross, which may be incipient tentacles.

The cla.s.sification of the Cyemaria is much disputed; sometimes they are held to be parasitic infusoria (like the Opalina), sometimes platodes or vermalia, related to the suctorial worms or rotifers, but having degenerated through parasitism. I adhere to the phylogenetically important theory that I advanced in 1876, that we have here real gastraeads, primitive survivors of the common stem-group of all the Metazoa. In the struggle for life they have found shelter in the body-cavity of other animals.

(FIGURE 2.233. Modern gastraeads.

Figure 1. Pemmatodiscus gastrulaceus (Monticelli), in longitudinal section.

Figure 2. Kunstleria gruveli (Delage), in longitudinal section. (From Kunstler and Gruvel.) Figures 3 to 5. Rhopalura Giardi (Julin): Figure 3 male, Figure 4 female, Figure 5 planula.

Figure 6. Dicyema macrocephala (Van Beneden).

Figures 7 to 15. Conocyema polymorpha (Van Beneden): Figure 7 the mature gastraead, Figures 8 to 15 its gastrulation. d primitive gut, o primitive mouth, e ectoderm, i entoderm, f gelatinous plate between e and i (supporting plate, blastocoel).)

The small Coelenteria attached to the floor of the sea that I have called the Physemaria (Haliphysema and Gastrophysema) probably form a third order (or cla.s.s) of the living gastraeads. The genus Haliphysema (Figures 2.234 and 2.235) is externally very similar to a large rhizopod (described by the same name in 1862) of the family of the Rhabdamminida, which was at first taken for a sponge. In order to avoid confusion with these, I afterwards gave them the name of Prophysema. The whole mature body of the Prophysema is a simple cylindrical or oval tube, with a two-layered wall. The hollow of the tube is the gastric cavity, and the upper opening of it the mouth (Figure 2.235 m). The two strata of cells that form the wall of the tube are the primary germinal layers. These rudimentary zoophytes differ from the swimming gastraeads chiefly in being attached at one end (the end opposite to the mouth) to the floor of the sea.

In Prophysema the primitive gut is a simple oval cavity, but in the closely related Gastrophysema it is divided into two chambers by a transverse constriction; the hind and smaller chamber above furnishes the s.e.xual products, the anterior one being for digestion.

The simplest sponges (Olynthus, Figure 2.238) have the same organisation as the Physemaria. The only material difference between them is that in the sponge the thin two-layered body-wall is pierced by numbers of pores. When these are closed they resemble the Physemaria. Possibly the gastraeads that we call Physemaria are only olynthi with the pores closed. The Ammoconida, or the simple tubular sand-sponges of the deep-sea (Ammolynthus, etc.), do not differ from the gastraeads in any important point when the pores are closed. In my Monograph on the Sponges (with sixty plates) I endeavoured to prove a.n.a.lytically that all the species of this cla.s.s can be traced phylogenetically to a common stem-form (Calcolynthus).

(FIGURES 2.234 AND 2.235. Prophysema primordiale, a living gastraead.

FIGURE 2.234. The whole of the spindle-shaped animal (attached below to the floor of the sea).

FIGURE 2.235. The same in longitudinal section. The primitive gut (d) opens above at the primitive mouth (m). Between the ciliated cells (g) are the amoeboid ova (e). The skin-layer (h) is encrusted with grains of sand below and sponge-spicules above.

FIGURES 2.236 TO 2.237. Ascula of gastrophysema, attached to the floor of the sea. Figure 2.236 external view, 2.237 longitudinal section. g primitive gut, o primitive mouth, i visceral layer, e cutaneous layer.

(Diagram.)

FIGURE 2.238. Olynthus, a very rudimentary sponge. A piece cut away in front.)

The lowest form of the Cnidaria is also not far removed from the gastraeads. In the interesting common fresh-water polyp (Hydra) the whole body is simply an oval tube with a double wall; only in this case the mouth has a crown of tentacles. Before these develop the hydra resembles an ascula (Figures 2.236 and 2.237). Afterwards there are slight histological differentiations in its ectoderm, though the entoderm remains a single stratum of cells. We find the first differentiation of epithelial and stinging cells, or of muscular and neural cells, in the thick ectoderm of the hydra.

In all these rudimentary living coelenteria the s.e.xual cells of both kinds--ova and sperm cells--are formed by the same individual; it is possible that the oldest gastraeads were hermaphroditic. It is clear from comparative anatomy that hermaphrodism--the combination of both kinds of s.e.xual cells in one individual--is the earliest form of s.e.xual differentiation; the separation of the s.e.xes (gonochorism) was a much later phenomenon. The s.e.xual cells originally proceeded from the edge of the primitive mouth of the gastraead.

CHAPTER 2.20. OUR WORM-LIKE ANCESTORS.

The gastraea theory has now convinced us that all the Metazoa or multicellular animals can be traced to a common stem-form, the Gastraea. In accordance with the biogenetic law, we find solid proof of this in the fact that the two-layered embryos of all the Metazoa can be reduced to a primitive common type, the gastrula. Just as the countless species of the Metazoa do actually develop in the individual from the simple embryonic form of the gastrula, so they have all descended in past time from the common stem-form of the Gastraea. In this fact, and the fact we have already established that the Gastraea has been evolved from the hollow vesicle of the one-layered Blastaea, and this again from the original unicellular stem-form, we have obtained a solid basis for our study of evolution. The clear path from the stem-cell to the gastrula represents the first section of our human stem-history (Chapters 1.8, 1.9, and 2.19).

The second section, that leads from the Gastraea to the Prochordonia, is much more difficult and obscure. By the Prochordonia we mean the ancient and long-extinct animals which the important embryonic form of the chordula proves to have once existed (cf. Figures 1.83 to 1.86).

The nearest of living animals to this embryonic structure are the lowest Tunicates, the Copelata (Appendicaria) and the larvae of the Ascidia. As both the Tunicates and the Vertebrates develop from the same chordula, we may infer that there was a corresponding common ancestor of both stems. We may call this the Chordaea, and the corresponding stem-group the Prochordonia or Prochordata.

From this important stem-group of the unarticulated Prochordonia (or "primitive chorda-animals") the stems of the Tunicates and Vertebrates have been divergently evolved. We shall see presently how this conclusion is justified in the present condition of morphological science.

We have first to answer the difficult and much-discussed question of the development of the Chordaea from the Gastraea; in other words, "How and by what transformations were the characteristic animals, resembling the embryonic chordula, which we regard as the common stem-forms of all the Chordonia, both Tunicates and Vertebrates, evolved from the simplest two-layered Metazoa?"

The descent of the Vertebrates from the Articulates has been maintained by a number of zoologists during the last thirty years with more zeal than discernment; and, as a vast amount has been written on the subject, we must deal with it to some extent. All three cla.s.ses of Articulates in succession have been awarded the honour of being considered the "real ancestors" of the Vertebrates: first, the Annelids (earth-worms, leeches, and the like), then the Crustacea (crabs, etc.), and, finally, the Tracheata (spiders, insects, etc.).

The most popular of these hypotheses was the annelid theory, which derived the Vertebrates from the Worms. It was almost simultaneously (1875) formulated by Carl Semper, of Wurtzburg, and Anton Dohrn, of Naples. The latter advanced this theory originally in favour of the failing degeneration theory, with which I dealt in my work, Aims and Methods of Modern Embryology.

This interesting degeneration theory--much discussed at that time, but almost forgotten now--was formed in 1875 with the aim of harmonising the results of evolution and ever-advancing Darwinism with religious belief. The spirited struggle that Darwin had occasioned by the reformation of the theory of descent in 1859, and that lasted for a decade with varying fortunes in every branch of biology, was drawing to a close in 1870-1872, and soon ended in the complete victory of transformism. To most of the disputants the chief point was not the general question of evolution, but the particular one of "man's place in nature"--"the question of questions," as Huxley rightly called it.

It was soon evident to every clear-headed thinker that this question could only be answered in the sense of our anthropogeny, by admitting that man had descended from a long series of Vertebrates by gradual modification and improvement.

In this way the real affinity of man and the Vertebrates came to be admitted on all hands. Comparative anatomy and ontogeny spoke too clearly for their testimony to be ignored any longer. But in order still to save man's unique position, and especially the dogma of personal immortality, a number of natural philosophers and theologians discovered an admirable way of escape in the "theory of degeneration."

Granting the affinity, they turned the whole evolutionary theory upside down, and boldly contended that "man is not the most highly developed animal, but the animals are degenerate men." It is true that man is closely related to the ape, and belongs to the vertebrate stem; but the chain of his ancestry goes upward instead of downward. In the beginning "G.o.d created man in his own image," as the prototype of the perfect vertebrate; but, in consequence of original sin, the human race sank so low that the apes branched off from it, and afterwards the lower Vertebrates. When this theory of degeneration was consistently developed, its supporters were bound to hold that the entire animal kingdom was descended from the debased children of men.

This theory was most strenuously defended by the Catholic priest and natural philosopher, Michelis, in his Haeckelogony: An Academic Protest against Haeckel's Anthropogeny (1875). In still more "academic" and somewhat mystic form the theory was advanced by a natural philosopher of the older Jena school--the mathematician and physicist, Carl Snell. But it received its chief support on the zoological side from Anton Dohrn, who maintained the anthropocentric ideas of Snell with particular ability. The Amphioxus, which modern science now almost unanimously regards as the real Primitive Vertebrate, the ancient model of the original vertebrate structure, is, according to Dohrn, a late, degenerate descendant of the stem, the "prodigal son" of the vertebrate family. It has descended from the Cyclostoma by a profound degeneration, and these in turn from the fishes; even the Ascidia and the whole of the Tunicates are merely degenerate fishes! Following out this curious theory, Dohrn came to contest the general belief that the Coelenterata and Worms are "lower animals"; he even declared that the unicellular Protozoa were degenerate Coelenterata. In his opinion "degeneration is the great principle that explains the existence of all the lower forms."

If this Michelis-Dohrn theory were true, and all animals were really degenerate descendants of an originally perfect humanity, man would a.s.suredly be the true centre and goal of all terrestrial life; his anthropocentric position and his immortality would be saved.

Unfortunately, this trustful theory is in such flagrant contradiction to all the known facts of paleontology and embryology that it is no longer worth serious scientific consideration.

But the case is no better for the much-discussed descent of the Vertebrates from the Annelids, which Dohrn afterwards maintained with great zeal. Of late years this hypothesis, which raised so much dust and controversy, has been entirely abandoned by most competent zoologists, even those who once supported it. Its chief supporter, Dohrn, admitted in 1890 that it is "dead and buried," and made a blus.h.i.+ng retraction at the end of his Studies of the Early History of the Vertebrate.

Now that the annelid-hypothesis is "dead and buried," and other attempts to derive the Vertebrates from Medusae, Echinoderms, or Molluscs, have been equally unsuccessful, there is only one hypothesis left to answer the question of the origin of the Vertebrates--the hypothesis that I advanced thirty-six years ago and called the "chordonia-hypothesis." In view of its sound establishment and its profound significance, it may very well claim to be a THEORY, and so should be described as the chordonia or chordaea theory.

I first advanced this theory in a series of university lectures in 1867, from which the History of Creation was composed. In the first edition of this work (1868) I endeavoured to prove, on the strength of Kowalevsky's epoch-making discoveries, that "of all the animals known to us the Tunicates are undoubtedly the nearest blood-relatives of the Vertebrates; they are the most closely related to the Vermalia, from which the Vertebrates have been evolved. Naturally, I do not mean that the Vertebrates have descended from the Tunicates, but that the two groups have sprung from a common root. It is clear that the real Vertebrates (primarily the Acrania) were evolved in very early times from a group of Worms, from which the degenerate Tunicates also descended in another and retrogressive direction." This common extinct stem-group are the Prochordonia; we still have a silhouette of them in the chordula-embryo of the Vertebrates and Tunicates; and they still exist independently, in very modified form, in the cla.s.s of the Copelata (Appendicaria, Figure 2.225).

The chordaea-theory received the most valuable and competent support from Carl Gegenbaur. This able comparative morphologist defended it in 1870, in the second edition of his Elements of Comparative Anatomy; at the same time he drew attention to the important relations of the Tunicates to a curious worm, Balanoglossus: he rightly regards this as the representative of a special cla.s.s of worms, which he called "gut-breathers" (Enteropneusta). Gegenbaur referred on many other occasions to the close blood-relations.h.i.+p of the Tunicates and Vertebrates, and luminously explained the reasons that justify us in framing the hypothesis of the descent of the two stems from a common ancestor, an unsegmented worm-like animal with an axial chorda between the dorsal nerve-tube and the ventral gut-tube.

The theory afterwards received a good deal of support from the research made by a number of distinguished zoologists and anatomists, especially C. Kupffer, B. Hatschek, F. Balfour, E. Van Beneden, and Julin. Since Hatschek's Studies of the Development of the Amphioxus gave us full information as to the embryology of this lowest vertebrate, it has become so important for our purpose that we must consider it a doc.u.ment of the first rank for answering the question we are dealing with.

The ontogenetic facts that we gather from this sole survivor of the Acrania are the more valuable for phylogenetic purposes, as paleontology, unfortunately, throws no light whatever on the origin of the Vertebrates. Their invertebrate ancestors were soft organisms without skeleton, and thus incapable of fossilisation, as is still the case with the lowest vertebrates--the Acrania and Cyclostoma. The same applies to the greater part of the Vermalia or worm-like animals, the various cla.s.ses and orders of which differ so much in structure. The isolated groups of this rich stem are living branches of a huge tree, the greater part of which has long been dead, and we have no fossil evidence as to its earlier form. Nevertheless, some of the surviving groups are very instructive, and give us clear indications of the way in which the Chordonia were developed from the Vermalia, and these from the Coelenteria.

While we seek the most important of these palingenetic forms among the groups of Coelenteria and Vermalia, it is understood that not a single one of them must be regarded as an unchanged, or even little changed, copy of the extinct stem-form. One group has retained one feature, another a different feature, of the original organisation, and other organs have been further developed and characteristically modified.

Hence here, more than in any other part of our genealogical tree, we have to keep before our mind the FULL PICTURE of development, and separate the unessential secondary phenomena from the essential and primary. It will be useful first to point out the chief advances in organisation by which the simple Gastraea gradually became the more developed Chordaea.

We find our first solid datum in the gastrula of the Amphioxus (Figure 1.38). Its bilateral and tri-axial type indicates that the Gastraeads--the common ancestors of all the Metazoa--divided at an early stage into two divergent groups. The uni-axial Gastraea became sessile, and gave rise to two stems, the Sponges and the Cnidaria (the latter all reducible to simple polyps like the hydra). But the tri-axial Gastraea a.s.sumed a certain pose or direction of the body on account of its swimming or creeping movement, and in order to sustain this it was a great advantage to share the burden equally between the two halves of the body (right and left). Thus arose the typical bilateral form, which has three axes. The same bilateral type is found in all our artificial means of locomotion--carts, s.h.i.+ps, etc.; it is by far the best for the movement of the body in a certain direction and steady position. Hence natural selection early developed this bilateral type in a section of the Gastraeads, and thus produced the stem-forms of all the bilateral animals.

The Gastraea bilateralis, of which we may conceive the bilateral gastrula of the amphioxus to be a palingenetic reproduction, represented the two-sided organism of the earliest Metazoa in its simplest form. The vegetal entoderm that lined their simple gut-cavity served for nutrition; the ciliated ectoderm that formed the external skin attended to locomotion and sensation; finally, the two primitive mesodermic cells, that lay to the right and left at the ventral border of the primitive mouth, were s.e.xual cells, and effected reproduction.

In order to understand the further development of the gastraea, we must pay particular attention to: (1) the careful study of the embryonic stages of the amphioxus that lie between the gastrula and the chordula; (2) the morphological study of the simplest Platodes (Platodaria and Turbellaria) and several groups of unarticulated Vermalia (Gastrotricha, Nemertina, Enteropneusta).

We have to consider the Platodes first, because they are on the border between the two princ.i.p.al groups of the Metazoa, the Coelenteria and the Coelomaria. With the former they share the lack of body-cavity, a.n.u.s, and vascular system; with the latter they have in common the bilateral type, the possession of a pair of nephridia or renal ca.n.a.ls, and the formation of a vertical brain or cerebral ganglion. It is now usual to distinguish four cla.s.ses of Platodes: the two free-living cla.s.ses of the primitive worms (Platodaria) and the coiled-worms (Turbellaria), and the two parasitic cla.s.ses of the suctorial worms (Trematoda) and the tape-worms (Cestoda). We have only to consider the first two of these cla.s.ses; the other two are parasites, and have descended from the former by adaptation to parasitic habits and consequent degeneration.

(FIGURE 2.239. Aphanostomum Langii (Haeckel), a primitive worm of the platodaria cla.s.s, of the order of Cryptocoela or Acoela. This new species of the genus Aphanostomum, named after Professor Arnold Lang of Zurich, was found in September, 1899, at Ajaccio in Corsica (creeping between fucoidea). It is one-twelfth of an inch long, one-twenty-fifth of an inch broad, and violet in colour. a mouth, g auditory vesicle, e ectoderm, i entoderm, o ovaries, a spermaries, f female aperture, m male aperture.)

The primitive worms (Platodaria) are very small flat worms of simple construction, but of great morphological and phylogenetic interest.

They have been hitherto, as a rule, regarded as a special order of the Turbellaria, and a.s.sociated with the Rhabdocoela; but they differ considerably from these and all the other Platodes (flat worms) in the absence of renal ca.n.a.ls and a special central nervous system; the structure of their tissue is also simpler than in the other Platodes.

Most of the Platodes of this group (Aphanostomum, Amphich.o.e.rus, Convoluta, Schizoprora, etc.) are very soft and delicate animals, swimming about in the sea by means of a ciliary coat, and very small (1/10 to 1/20 inch long). Their oval body, without appendages, is sometimes spindle-shaped or cylindrical, sometimes flat and leaf-shaped. Their skin is merely a layer of ciliated ectodermic cells. Under this is a soft medullary substance, which consists of entodermic cells with vacuoles. The food pa.s.ses through the mouth directly into this digestive medullary substance, in which we do not generally see any permanent gut-cavity (it may have entirely collapsed); hence these primitive Platodes have been called Acoela (without gut-cavity or coelom), or, more correctly, Cryptocoela, or Pseudocoela. The s.e.xual organs of these hermaphroditic Platodaria are very simple--two pairs of strings of cells, the inner of which (the ovaries, Figure 2.239 o) produce ova, and the outer (the spermaria, s) sperm-cells. These gonads are not yet independent s.e.xual glands, but s.e.xually differentiated cell-groups in the medullary substance, or, in other words, parts of the gut-wall. Their products, the s.e.x-cells, are conveyed out behind by two pairs of short ca.n.a.ls; the male opening (m) lies just behind the female (f). Most of the Platodaria have not the muscular pharynx, which is very advanced in the Turbellaria and Trematoda. On the other hand, they have, as a rule, before or behind the mouth, a bulbous sense-organ (auditory vesicle or organ of equilibrium, g), and many of them have also a couple of simple optic spots. The cell-pit of the ectoderm that lies underneath is rather thick, and represents the first rudiment of a neural ganglion (vertical brain or acroganglion).

The Turbellaria, with which the similar Platodaria were formerly cla.s.sed, differ materially from them in the more advanced structure of their organs, and especially in having a central nervous system (vertical brain) and excretory renal ca.n.a.ls (nephridia); both originate from the ectoderm. But between the two germinal layers a mesoderm is developed, a soft ma.s.s of connective tissue, in which the organs are embedded. The Turbellaria are still represented by a number of different forms, in both fresh and sea-water. The oldest of these are the very rudimentary and tiny forms that are known as Rhabdocoela on account of the simple construction of their gut; they are, as a rule, less than a quarter of an inch long and of a simple oval or lancet shape (Figure 2.240). The surface is covered with ciliated epithelium, a stratum of ectodermic cells. The digestive gut is still the simple primitive gut of the gastraea (d), with a single aperture that is both mouth and a.n.u.s (m). There is, however, an inv.a.g.i.n.ation of the ectoderm at the mouth, which has given rise to a muscular pharynx (sd). It is noteworthy that the mouth of the Turbellaria (like the primitive mouth of the Gastraea) may, in this cla.s.s, change its position considerably in the middle line of the ventral surface; sometimes it lies behind (Opisthostomum), sometimes in the middle (Mesostomum), sometimes in front (Prosostomum). This displacement of the mouth from front to rear is very interesting, because it corresponds to a phylogenetic displacement of the mouth. This probably occurred in the Platode ancestors of most (or all?) of the Coelomaria; in these the permanent mouth (metastoma) lies at the fore end (oral pole), whereas the primitive mouth (prostoma) lay at the hind end of the bilateral body.

In most of the Turbellaria there is a narrow cavity, containing a number of secondary organs, between the two primary germinal layers, the outer or animal layer of which forms the epidermis and the inner vegetal layer the visceral epithelium. The earliest of these organs are the s.e.xual organs; they are very variously constructed in the Platode-cla.s.s; in the simplest case there are merely two pairs of gonads or s.e.xual glands--a pair of t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es (Figure 2.241 h) and a pair of ovaries (e). They open externally, sometimes by a common aperture (Monogonopora), sometimes by separate ones, the female behind the male (Digonopora, Figure 2.241). The s.e.xual glands develop originally from the two promesoblasts or primitive mesodermic cells (Figure 1.83 p). As these earliest mesodermic structures extended, and became s.p.a.cious s.e.xual pouches in the later descendants of the Platodes, probably the two coelom-pouches were formed from them, the first trace of the real body-cavity of the higher Metazoa (Enterocoela).

The gonads are among the oldest organs, the few other organs that we find in the Platodes between the gut-wall and body-wall being later evolutionary products. One of the oldest and most important of these are the kidneys or nephridia, which remove unusable matter from the body (Figure 2.240 nc). These urinary or excretory organs were originally enlarged skin-glands--a couple of ca.n.a.ls that run the length of the body, and have a separate or common external aperture (nm). They often have a number of branches. These special excretory organs are not found in the other Coelenteria (Gastraeads, Sponges, Cnidaria) or the Cryptocoela. They are first met in the Turbellaria, and have been transmitted direct from these to the Vermalia, and from these to the higher stems.

Finally, there is a very important new organ in the Turbellaria, which we do not find in the Cryptocoela (Figure 2.239) and their gastraead ancestors--the rudimentary nervous system. It consists of a couple of simple cerebral ganglia (Figure 2.241 g) and fine nervous fibres that radiate from them; these are partly voluntary nerves (or motor fibres) that go to the thin muscular layer developing under the skin; and partly sensory nerves that proceed to the sense-cells of the ciliated epiderm (f). Many of the Turbellaria have also special sense-organs; a couple of ciliated smell pits (na), rudimentary eyes (au), and, less frequently, auditory vesicles.

On these principles I a.s.sume that the oldest and simplest Turbellaria arose from Platodaria, and these directly from bilateral Gastraeads.

The chief advances were the formation of gonads and nephridia, and of the rudimentary brain. On this hypothesis, which I advanced in 1872 in the first sketch of the gastraea-theory (Monograph on the Sponges), there is no direct affinity between the Platodes and the Cnidaria.

(FIGURE 2.240. A simple turbellarian (Rhabdocoelum). m mouth, sd gullet epithelium, sm gullet muscles, d gastric gut, nc renal ca.n.a.ls, nm renal aperture, au eye, na olfactory pit. (Diagram.)

FIGURE 2.241. The same, showing the other organs. g brain, au eye, na olfactory pit, n nerves, h t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, male symbol male aperture, female symbol female aperture, e ovary, f ciliated epiderm. (Diagram.)