Apart from this bilateral structure, the gastrula of the amphioxus resembles the typical archigastrula of the lower animals (Figures 1.30 to 1.36) in developing the two primary germinal layers from a single layer of cells. This is clearly the oldest and original form of the metazoic embryo. Although the animals I have mentioned belong to the most diverse classes, they nevertheless agree with each other, and many more animal forms, in having retained to the present day, by a conservative heredity, this palingenetic form of gastrulation which they have from their earliest common ancestors. But this is not the case with the great majority of the animals. With these the original embryonic process has been gradually more or less altered in the course of millions of years by adaptation to new conditions of development. Both the segmentation of the ovum and the subsequent gastrulation have in this way been considerably changed. In fact, these variations have become so great in the course of time that the segmentation was not rightly understood in most animals, and the gastrula was unrecognised. It was not until I had made an extensive comparative study, lasting a considerable time (in the years 1866 to 1875), in animals of the most diverse classes, that I succeeded in showing the same common typical process in these apparently very different forms of gastrulation, and tracing them all to one original form. I regard all those that diverge from the primary palingenetic gastrulation as secondary, modified, and cenogenetic. The more or less divergent form of gastrula that is produced may be called a secondary, modified gastrula, or a metagastrula. The reader will find a scheme of these different kinds of segmentation and gastrulation at the close of this chapter.