Text Book of Biology, Part 1: VertebrataWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Biology -- Textbooks
Section 37. But as certainly as we have no such metameric
segmentation, as this older view implies, in the brain-case of the frog,
so quite as certainly is metameric segmentation evident in its
branchial arches. We have the four gill slits of the tadpole and their
bars repeating one another; the hyoid bar in front of these is evidently
of a similar nature; and that the ear drum is derived from an
imperforate gill slit is enforced by the presence of an open slit (the
spiracle) in the rays and dog-fish in an entirely equivalent position.
Does the mouth answer to a further pair of gill slits, and is the jaw
arch (palato-pterygoid + Meckel's cartilage) equivalent to the arches
that come behind it? This question has been asked, and answered in
the affirmative, by many morphologists, but not by any means by all.
The cranial nerves have a curious similarity of arrangement with regard
to the gill slits and the mouth; the fifth nerve forks over the mouth, the
seventh forks over the ear drum, the ninth, in the tadpole and fish,
forks over the first branchial slit, and the tenth is, as it were, a leash
of nerves, each forking over one of the remaining gill slits. But this
matter will be more intelligible when the student has worked over a
fish type, and need not detain us any further now.
Section 38. See also Section 13 again, in which is the suggestion
that the occipital part of the skull is possibly a fusion of vertebrae, a
new view with much in its favour, and obviously an entirely different
one from the old "segmental" view of the entire skull, discussed in
Section 36.
_Questions on the Frog_
[All these questions were actually set at London University
Examinations.] {In Both Editions.}
1. Give an account, with illustrative sketches, of the digestive organs
of the common frog, specifying particularly the different forms of
epithelium met with in the several regions thereof.
2. Describe the heart of a frog, and compare it with that of a fish and
of a mammal, mentioning in each case the great vessels which open
into each cavity.
3. Compare with one another the breathing organs and the
mechanism of respiration in a frog and in a rabbit. Give figures
showing the condition of the heart and great arteries in these animals,
and indicate in each case the nature of the blood in the several
cavities of the heart.
4. Draw diagrams, with the parts named, illustrating the arrangement
of the chief arteries of (a) the frog, (b) the rabbit. (c) Compare briefly
the arrangements thus described. (d) In what important respects does
the vascular mechanism of the frog differ from that of the fish, in
correlation with the presence of lungs?
5. In the frog provided, free the heart, both aortic arches, dorsal aorta
as far as its terminal bifurcation, and both chains of sympathetic
ganglia from surrounding structures; and remove them, in their
natural connection, from the animal into a watch-glass.
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