From the first gill-arch, from the inner surface of which the muscular tongue proceeds, we get the first structure of the maxillary skeleton--the upper and lower jaws, which surround the mouth and support the teeth. These important parts are wholly wanting in the two lowest classes of Vertebrates, the Acrania and Cyclostoma. They appear first in the earliest Selachii (Figures 2.248 to 2.251), and have been transmitted from this stem-group of the Gnathostomes to the higher Vertebrates. Hence the original formation of the skeleton of the mouth can be traced to these primitive fishes, from which we have inherited it. The teeth are developed from the skin that clothes the jaws. As the whole mouth cavity originates from the outer integument (Figure 2.350), the teeth also must come from it. As a fact, this is found to be the case on microscopic examination of the development and finer structure of the teeth. The scales of the fishes, especially of the shark type (Figure 2.351), are in the same position as their teeth in this respect (Figure 2.252). The osseous matter of the tooth (dentine) develops from the corium; its enamel covering is a secretion of the epidermis that covers the corium. It is the same with the cutaneous teeth or placoid scales of the Selachii. At first the whole of the mouth was armed with these cutaneous teeth in the Selachii and in the earliest amphibia. Afterwards the formation of them was restricted to the edges of the jaws. Hence our human teeth are, in relation to their original source, modified fish-scales. For the same reason we must regard the salivary glands, which open into the mouth, as epidermic glands, as they are formed, not from the glandular layer of the gut like the rest of the alimentary glands, but from the epidermis, from the horny plate of the outer germinal layer. Naturally, in harmony with this evolution of the mouth, the salivary glands belong genetically to one series with the sudoriferous, sebaceous, and mammary glands. Thus the human alimentary canal is as simple as the primitive gut of the gastrula in its original structure. Later it resembles the gut of the earliest Vermalia (Gastrotricha). It then divides into two sections, a fore or branchial gut and a hind or hepatic gut, like the alimentary canal of the Balanoglossus, the Ascidia, and the Amphioxus. The formation of the jaws and the branchial arches changes it into a real fish-gut (Selachii). But the branchial gut, the one reminiscence of our fish-ancestors, is afterwards atrophied as such. The parts of it that remain are converted into entirely different structures. (FIGURE 2.356. Transverse section of the head of a Petromyzon-larva. (From Gegenbaur.) Beneath the pharynx (d) we see the hypobranchial groove; above it the chorda and neural tube. A, B, C stages of constriction.)