That Eurypterus also possessed a camerostome (_cam._) seems to follow of
necessity from its evident affinities both with Limulus and the scorpions.
We see, in fact, that the mouth of these old sea-scorpions was formed after
the fashion of Limulus, surrounded by masticatory organs in the shape of
foot-jaws, and yet foreshadowed that of the scorpion, so that an ideal
sagittal section of one of these old palæostracan forms would be obtained
by the combination of actual sagittal sections through Limulus and a member
of the scorpion group, with, at the same time, a due recognition of Holm's
researches. Such a section is represented in Fig. 105, B, in which I have
drawn the central nervous system and its nerves, the median eyes (_C.E._),
the olfactory organs (_Cam._), the pharynx (_Ph._), oesophagus (_oes._),
and alimentary canal (_Al._), but have not tried to indicate the lateral
eyes. I have represented the prosomatic appendages by numbers (1-7), and
{242}the foremost mesosomatic segments by numbers (8-13). I have placed the
four endognaths and the nerves going to them close together, and made them
small, mere tentacles, in recognition of the character of these appendages
in Eurypterus, and have indicated the position and size of the large
ectognath, with its separate nerve, by (6). If among the ancient
Eurypterus-like forms, which were living at the time when vertebrates first
appeared, there were some in which the ectognaths also had dwindled to a
pair of tentacles, then such animals would possess a prosomatic chamber
formed by a metastoma or accessory lip, within which were situated five
pairs of short tactile appendages or tentacles. If the vertebrate were
derived from such an animal, then the trigeminal nerve, as the
representative of these prosomatic appendage-nerves, ought to be found to
supply the muscles of this accessory lip and of these five pairs of
tentacles in the lowest vertebrate.
This prosomatic or oral chamber, as it might be called, was limited
posteriorly by the fused metastoma (7) and operculum (8), so that if in the
same imaginary animal one imagines that the gill-chambers, instead of being
separate, are united to form one large respiratory chamber, then, in such
an animal, a prosomatic oral chamber, in which the prosomatic appendages
worked, would be separated from a mesosomatic respiratory chamber by a
septum composed of the conjoined basal portions of the mesosomatic
operculum and the prosomatic metastoma, as indicated in the diagram. In
this septum the nerves to the last prosomatic appendage (equivalent to the
last part of the trigeminal in the vertebrate) and to the first mesosomatic
(equivalent to the thyroid part of the facial) would run, as shown in the
figure, close together in the first part of their course, and would
separate when the ventral surface was reached, to pass headwards and
tailwards respectively.
THE COXAL GLANDS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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