The endoderm lining the canal of the sensory club is specially
differentiated. In the stalk it is more columnar than the epithelium
of the stomach pockets, and is made up of cells containing a brightly
staining nucleus with very little trace of cytoplasm. The cell bodies
appear as if filled with a clear, non-staining fluid. Perhaps these cells
give the stalk elasticity to act in connection with the thin layer of
longitudinal muscle-fibres that are found just external to the supporting
lamella. The epithelium of the terminal enlargement of the canal is
composed of very high narrow cells, many of which show two nuclei of
equal size and staining quality lying side by side.
In continuation of the specialized epithelium of the perradial furrows
in the floor of the stomach the inner wall of the stomach pocket shows a
strip of similar densely crowded columnar cells leading from the gastric
ostium downwards to the canal of the sensory club. As in the other case,
the strip probably represents a specially ciliated tract, and perhaps
in it we see the reason why the canal of the sensory club is almost
always found to contain either spermatozoa which are shed by the male
reproductive organs directly into the stomach pocket, or else floating
cells of the kind to be described in the next section.
The canals of the interradial tentacles arise from the peripheral
gastro-vascular system much lower down than those of the sensory clubs,
since these tentacles have preserved their primary positions with
reference to the bell margin. Figure 16 represents a section taken at
the level of the base of the pedalia which gives the connection of the
tentacle canals with the gastro-vascular system. At the level below
the sensory niche the four broad stomach pockets have been divided, as
we have seen, into the right marginal pockets (_mp_). The figure shows
that in the interradial corners the longitudinal septa (_ivl_, in the
preceding figures), or lines of fusion between the two walls of the
peripheral gastro-vascular space, which divide the primitively simple
space into the four stomach pockets, have come to an end, leaving a
connecting canal (_cc_) in each corner as all that remains of the
primitive uninterrupted communication between all parts of the peripheral
system. It is from these four connecting canals that the tentacle canals
take their origin. From this point of origin each tentacle canal passes
downwards, surrounded by the gelatine of the pedalium, into the tentacle
proper.
The connecting canals are of morphological importance in that they are
supposed, with much reason, to represent in the Cubomedusæ the circular
canal of the Hydromedusæ.
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