Comparative anatomy shows us to-day, in the series of the double-nosed Vertebrates, from the fishes up to man, all the different stages in the development of the nose, which the advanced olfactory organ of the higher mammals has passed through at various periods in the course of its phylogeny. It first appears in the embryo of man and the higher Vertebrates, in which the double fish-nose persists throughout life. At an early stage, before there is any trace of the characteristic human face, a pair of small pits are formed in the head over the original mouth-cavity; these were first discovered by Baer, and rightly called the "olfactory pits" (Figures 2.306 n and 2.307 n). These primitive nasal pits are quite separate from the rudimentary mouth, which also originates as a pit-like depression in the skin, in front of the blind fore end of the gut. Both the pair of nasal pits and the single mouth-pit (Figure 2.310 m) are clothed with the horny plate. The original separation of the former from the latter is, however, presently abolished, a process forming above the mouth-pit--the "frontal process" (Figure 2.309 st). Its outer edge rises to the right and left in the shape of two lateral processes; these are the inner nasal processes or folds (in). Opposite to these a parallel ridge is formed on either side between the eye and the nasal pit; these are the outer nasal processes (an). Thus between the inner and outer nasal processes a groove-like depression is formed on either side, which leads from the nasal pit towards the mouth-pit (m); this groove is, as the reader will guess, the same nasal furrow or groove that we have already seen in the shark (Figure 2.305 r). As the parallel edges of the inner and outer nasal processes bend towards each other and join above the nasal groove, this is converted into a tube, the primitive nasal canal. Hence the nose of man and all the other Amniotes consists at this embryonic stage of a couple of narrow tubes, the nasal canals, which lead from the outer surface of the forehead into the rudimentary mouth. This transitory condition resembles that in which we find the nose permanently in the Dipneusts and Amphibia.