The auditory nerve, or eighth cerebral nerve, expands with one branch in the cochlea, and with the other in the remaining parts of the labyrinth. This nerve is, as Gegenbaur has shown, the sensory dorsal branch of a cerebro-spinal nerve, the motor ventral branch of which acts for the muscles of the face (nervus facialis). It has therefore originated phylogenetically from an ordinary cutaneous nerve, and so is of quite different origin from the optic and olfactory nerves, which both represent direct outgrowths of the brain. In this respect the auscultory organ is essentially different from the organs of sight and smell. The acoustic nerve is formed from ectodermic cells of the hind brain, and develops from the nervous structure that appears at its dorsal limit. On the other hand, all the membranous, cartilaginous, and osseous coverings of the labyrinth are formed from the mesodermic head-plates. (FIGURE 2.323. Primitive skull of the human embryo, four weeks old, vertical section, left half seen internally. v, z, m, h, n the five pits of the cranial cavity, in which the five cerebral vesicles lie (fore, intermediate, middle, hind, and after brains), o pear-shaped primary auscultory vesicle (appearing through), a eye (appearing through), no optic nerve, p canal of the hypophysis, t central prominence of the skull. (From Kolliker.)) The apparatus for conducting sound which we find in the external and middle ear of mammals develops quite separately from the apparatus for the sensation of sound. It is both phylogenetically and ontogenetically an independent secondary formation, a later accession to the primary internal ear. Nevertheless, its development is not less interesting, and is explained with the same ease by comparative anatomy. In all the fishes and in the lowest Vertebrates there is no special apparatus for conducting sound, no external or middle ear; they have only a labyrinth, an internal ear, which lies within the skull. They are without the tympanum and tympanic cavity, and all its appendages. From many observations made in the last few decades it seems that many of the fishes (if not all) cannot distinguish tones; their labyrinth seems to be chiefly (if not exclusively) an organ for the sense of space (or equilibrium). If it is destroyed, the fishes lose their balance and fall. In the opinion of recent physiologists this applies also to many of the Invertebrates (including the nearer ancestors of the Vertebrates). The round vesicles which are considered to be their auscultory vesicles, and which contain an otolith, are supposed to be merely organs of the sense of space ("static vesicles or statocysts").