I give the name of primitive gut (progaster) and primitive mouth (prostoma) to the internal cavity of the gastrula-body and its opening; because this cavity is the first rudiment of the digestive cavity of the organism, and the opening originally served to take food into it. Naturally, the primitive gut and mouth change very considerably afterwards in the various classes of animals. In most of the cnidaria and many of the annelids (worm-like animals) they remain unchanged throughout life. But in most of the higher animals, and so in the vertebrates, only the larger central part of the later alimentary canal develops from the primitive gut; the later mouth is a fresh development, the primitive mouth disappearing or changing into the anus. We must therefore distinguish carefully between the primitive gut and mouth of the gastrula and the later alimentary canal and mouth of the fully developed vertebrate.* (* My distinction (1872) between the primitive gut and mouth and the later permanent stomach (metagaster) and mouth (metastoma) has been much criticised; but it is as much justified as the distinction between the primitive kidneys and the permanent kidneys. Professor E. Ray-Lankester suggested three years afterwards (1875) the name archenteron for the primitive gut, and blastoporus for the primitive mouth.) (FIGURE 1.36. Gastrula of a lower sponge (olynthus). A external view, B longitudinal section through the axis, g primitive-gut cavity, a primitive mouth-aperture, i inner cell-layer (entoderm, endoblast, gut-layer), e external cell-layer (outer germinal layer, ectoderm, ectoblast, or skin-layer). The two layers of cells which line the gut-cavity and compose its wall are of extreme importance. These two layers, which are the sole builders of the whole organism, are no other than the two primary germinal layers, or the primitive germ-layers. I have spoken in the introductory section (Chapter 1.3.) of their radical importance. The outer stratum is the skin-layer, or ectoderm (Figures 1.30 to 1.35 e); the inner stratum is the gut-layer, or entoderm (i). The former is often also called the ectoblast, or epiblast, and the latter the endoblast, or hypoblast. FROM THESE TWO PRIMARY GERMINAL LAYERS ALONE IS DEVELOPED THE ENTIRE ORGANISM OF ALL THE METAZOA OR MULTICELLULAR ANIMALS. The skin-layer forms the external skin, the gut-layer forms the internal skin or lining of the body. Between these two germinal layers are afterwards developed the middle germinal layer (mesoderma) and the body-cavity (coeloma) filled with blood or lymph.