Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
The double nose has now acquired the characteristic form that man
shares with the other mammals. Its further development is easy to
follow; it consists of the formation of the inner and outer processes
of the walls of the two cavities. The external nose is not formed
until long after all these essential parts of the internal organ of
smell. The first traces of it in the human embryo are found about the
middle of the second month (Figures 2.313 to 2.316). As can be seen in
any human embryo during the first month, there is at first no trace of
the external nose. It only develops afterwards from the foremost nasal
part of the primitive skull, growing forwards from behind. The
characteristic human nose is formed very late. Much stress is at times
laid on this organ as an exclusive privilege of man. But there are
apes that have similar noses, such as the long-nosed ape.
(FIGURE 2.315. Face of a human embryo, seven weeks old, (From
Kollmann.) Joining of the nasal processes (e outer, i inner) with the
upper-jaw process (o), n nasal wall, a ear-opening.)
The evolution of the eye is not less interesting and instructive than
that of the nose. Although this noblest of the sensory organs is one
of the most elaborate and purposive on account of its optic perfection
and remarkable structure, it nevertheless develops, without
preconceived design, from a simple process of the outer germinal
layer. The fully-formed human eye is a round capsule, the eye-ball
(Figure 2.317). This lies in the bony cavity of the skull, surrounded
by protective fat and motor muscles. The greater part of it is taken
up with a semi-fluid, transparent gelatinous substance, the corpus
vitreum. The crystalline lens is fitted into the anterior surface of
the ball (Figure 2.317 l). It is a lenticular, bi-convex, transparent
body, the most important of the refractive media in the eye. Of this
group we have, besides the corpus vitreum and the lens, the watery
fluid (humor aqueus) that is found in front of the lens (at the letter
m in Figure 2.317). These three transparent refractive media, by which
the rays of light that enter the eye are broken up and re-focussed,
are enclosed in a solid round capsule, composed of several different
coats, something like the concentric layers of an onion. The outermost
and thickest of these envelopes is the white sclerotic coat of the
eye. It consists of tough white connective tissue. In front of the
lens a circular, strongly-curved, transparent plate is fitted into the
sclerotic, like the glass of a watch--the cornea (b). At its outer
surface the cornea is covered with a very thin layer of the epidermis;
this is known as the conjunctiva. It goes from the cornea over the
inner surface of the eye-lids, the upper and lower folds which we draw
over the eye in closing it. At the inner corner of the eye we have a
rudimentary organ in the shape of the relic of a third (inner)
eye-lid, which is greatly developed, as "nictitating (winking)
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