Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
When the cleavage is thus ended, the mulberry-like mass changes into a
hollow globular sphere. Watery fluid or jelly gathers inside the
globule; the segmentation-cells are loosened, and all rise to the
surface. There they are flattened by mutual pressure, and assume the
shape of truncated pyramids, and arrange themselves side by side in one
regular layer (Figs. F, G). This layer of cells is called the germinal
membrane (or blastoderm); the homogeneous cells which compose its
simple structure are called blastodermic cells; and the whole hollow
sphere, the walls of which are made of the preceding, is called the
_blastula_ or _ blastosphere._[18]
[18] The blastula of the lower animals must not be confused with the
very different blastula of the mammal, which is properly called the
_gastrocystis_ or _blastocystis._ This _cenogenetic_ gastrocystis and
the _palingenetic_ blastula are sometimes very wrongly comprised under
the common name of blastula or vesicula blastodermica.
In the case of our coral, and of many other lower forms of animal life,
the young embryo begins at once to move independently and swim about in
the water. A fine, long, thread-like process, a sort of whip or lash,
grows out of each blastodermic cell, and this independently executes
vibratory movements, slow at first, but quicker after a time (Fig. F).
In this way each blastodermic cell becomes a ciliated cell. The
combined force of all these vibrating lashes causes the whole blastula
to move about in a rotatory fashion. In many other animals, especially
those in which the embryo develops within enclosed membranes, the
ciliated cells are only formed at a later stage, or even not formed at
all. The blastosphere may grow and expand by the blastodermic cells (at
the surface of the sphere) dividing and increasing, and more fluid is
secreted in the internal cavity. There are still to-day some organisms
that remain throughout life at the structural stage of the
blastula—hollow vesicles that swim about by a ciliary movement in the
water, the wall of which is composed of a single layer of cells, such
as the volvox, the magosphæra, synura, etc. We shall speak further of
the great phylogenetic significance of this fact in Chapter XIX.
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