The actual ontogenetic development of the gastrula from the blastula furnishes sound evidence as to the phylogenetic origin of the Gastraea from the Blastaea. A pit-shaped depression appears at one side of the spherical blastula (Figure 1.29 H). In the end this invagination goes so far that the outer or invaginated part of the blastoderm lies close on the inner or non-invaginated part (Figure 1.29 J). In explaining the phylogenetic origin of the gastraea in the light of this ontogenetic process, we may assume that the one-layered cell-community of the blastaea began to take in food more largely at one particular part of its surface. Natural selection would gradually lead to the formation of a depression or pit at this alimentary spot on the surface of the ball. The depression would grow deeper and deeper. In time the vegetal function of taking in and digesting food would be confined to the cells that lined this hole; the other cells would see to the animal functions of locomotion, sensation, and protection. This was the first division of labour among the originally homogeneous cells of the blastaea. (FIGURE 2.231. The Norwegian Magosphaera planula, swimming about by means of the lashes or cilia at its surface. FIGURE 2.232. Section of Magosphaera planula, showing how the pear-shaped cells in the centre of the gelatinous ball are connected by a fibrous process. Each cell has a contractile vacuole as well as a nucleus.) The effect, then, of this earliest histological differentiation was to produce two different kinds of cells--nutritive cells in the depression and locomotive cells on the surface outside. But this involved the severance of the two primary germinal layers--a most important process. When we remember that even man's body, with all its various parts, and the body of all the other higher animals, are built up originally out of these two simple layers, we cannot lay too much stress on the phylogenetic significance of this gastrulation. In the simple primitive gut or gastric cavity of the gastrula and its rudimentary mouth we have the first real organ of the animal frame in the morphological sense; all the other organs were developed afterwards from these. In reality, the whole body of the gastrula is merely a "primitive gut." I have shown already (Chapters 1.8 and 1.9) that the two-layered embryos of all the Metazoa can be reduced to this typical gastrula. This important fact justifies us in concluding, in accordance with the biogenetic law, that their ancestors also were phylogenetically developed from a similar stem-form. This ancient stem-form is the gastraea.