Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Echinoderma" to "Edward, prince of Wales": Volume 8, Slice 10Various
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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Echinoderma" to "Edward, prince of Wales": Volume 8, Slice 10
Various
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ambulacra, and by a perihaemal system of canals apparently growing out
from coelomic cavities. All living Echinoderms have a lacunar, haemal
system of diverse origin; this, the ambulacral system, and the
coelomic cavities, contain a fluid holding albumen in solution and
carrying numerous amoebocytes, which are developed in special
lymph-glands and are capable of wandering through all tissues. The
Echinoderms may be divided into seven classes, whose probable
relations are thus indicated:--
/ Cystidea------Edrioasteroidea
| | |\
PELMATOZOA < | | \ Holothurioidea \
| | | |
| Blastoidea | > ELEUTHEROZOA
\ Crinoidea | |
Stelliformia |
Echinoidea /
Brief systematic accounts of these classes follow:--
Grade A. PELMATOZOA.--Echinoderma with the viscera enclosed in a
calcified and plated theca, of which the oral surface is uppermost,
and which is usually attached, either temporarily or permanently, by
the aboral surface. Food brought to the mouth by a subvective system
of ciliated grooves, radiating from the mouth either between the
plates of the theca (endothecal), or over the theca (epithecal), or
along processes from the theca (exothecal: arms, pinnules, &c.), or,
in part, and as a secondary development, below the theca (hypothecal).
Anus usually in the upper or oral half of the theca, and never aboral.
An aborally-placed motor nerve-centre gives off branches to the stroma
connecting the various plates of the theca and of its brachial, anal
and columnar extensions, and thus co-ordinates the movements of the
whole skeleton. The circumoesophageal water-ring communicates
indirectly with the exterior; the podia, when present, are
respiratory, not locomotor, in function.
Class I. CYSTIDEA.--Pelmatozoa in which radial polymeric symmetry of
the theca is developed either not at all or not in complete
correlation with the radial symmetry of the ambulacra (such as obtains
in Blastoidea and Crinoidea); in which extensions of the food-grooves
are exothecal or epithecal or both combined, but neither endothecal
nor pierced by podia (as in some Edrioasteroidea) All Palaeozoic.
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