The gonads are the most important segmental organs of the hyposoma, in the sense that they are phylogenetically the oldest. We find sexual glands (as pouch-like appendages of the gastro-canal system) in most of the lower animals, even in the medusae, etc., which have no kidneys. The latter appear first (as a pair of excretory tubes) in the platodes (turbellaria), and have probably been inherited from these by the articulates (annelids) on the one hand and the unarticulated prochordonia on the other, and from these passed to the articulated vertebrates. The oldest form of the kidney system in this stem are the segmental pronephridia or prorenal canals, in the same arrangement as Boveri found them in the amphioxus. They are small canals that lie in the frontal plane, on each side of the chorda, between the episoma and hyposoma (Figure 1.102 n); their internal funnel-shaped opening leads into the various body-cavities, their outer opening is the lateral furrow of the epidermis. Originally they must have had a double function, the carrying away of the urine from the episomites and the release of the sexual cells from the hyposomites. The recent investigations of Ruckert and Van Wijhe on the mesodermic segments of the trunk and the excretory system of the selachii show that these "primitive fishes" are closely related to the amphioxus in this further respect. The transverse section of the shark-embryo in Figure 1.161 shows this very clearly. In other higher vertebrates, also, the kidneys develop (though very differently formed later on) from similar structures, which have been secondarily derived from the segmental pronephridia of the acrania. The parts of the mesoderm at which the first traces of them are found are usually called the middle or mesenteric plates. As the first traces of the gonads make their appearance in the lining of these middle plates nearer inward (or the middle) from the inner funnels of the nephro-canals, it is better to count this part of the mesoderm with the hyposoma. The chief and oldest organ of the vertebrate hyposoma, the alimentary canal, is generally described as an unsegmented organ. But we could just as well say that it is the oldest of all the segmented organs of the vertebrate; the double row of the coelom-pouches grows out of the dorsal wall of the gut, on either side of the chorda. In the brief period during which these segmental coelom-pouches are still openly connected with the gut, they look just like a double chain of segmented visceral glands. But apart from this, we have originally in all vertebrates an important articulation of the fore-gut, that is wanting in the lower gut, the segmentation of the branchial (gill) gut.