At the head part of the embryo in the amniotes there is not generally a cleavage of the middle germinal layer into provertebral and lateral plates, but the dorsal and ventral somites are blended from the first, and form what are called the “head-plates” (Fig. 148 _k_). From these are formed the skull, the bony case of the brain, and the muscles and corium of the body. The skull develops in the same way as the membranous vertebral column. The right and left halves of the head curve over the cerebral vesicle, enclose the foremost part of the chorda below, and thus finally form a simple, soft, membranous capsule about the brain. This is afterwards converted into a cartilaginous primitive skull, such as we find permanently in many of the fishes. Much later this cartilaginous skull becomes the permanent bony skull with its various parts. The bony skull in man and all the other amniotes is more highly differentiated and modified than that of the lower vertebrates, the amphibia and fishes. But as the one has arisen phylogenetically from the other, we must assume that in the former no less than the latter the skull was originally formed from the sclerotomes of a number of (at least nine) head-somites. Fig.170. Head of a dog embryo, seen from the front. Fig. 170—Head of a dog embryo, seen from the front. _ a_ the two lateral halves of the foremost cerebral vesicle, _ b_ rudimentary eye, _c_ middle cerebral vesicle, _de_ first pair of gill-arches (_e_ upper-jaw process, _d_ lower-jaw process), _f, f′, f″,_ second, third, and fourth pairs of gill-arches, _g h i k_ heart (_g_ right, _ h_ left auricle; _i_ left, _k_ right ventricle), _ l_ origin of the aorta with three pairs of arches, which go to the gill-arches. (From _Bischoff._) While the articulation of the vertebrate body is always obvious in the _episoma_ or dorsal body, and is clearly expressed in the segmentation of the muscular plates and vertebræ, it is more latent in the _hyposoma_ or ventral body. Nevertheless, the hyposomites of the vegetal half of the body are not less important than the episomites of the animal half. The segmentation in the ventral cavity affects the following principal systems of organs: 1, the gonads or sex-glands (gonotomes); 2, the nephridia or kidneys (nephrotomes); and 3, the head-gut with its gill-clefts (branchiotomes).