It is instructive to notice that the original position of attachment of
this muscle is naturally posterior to that of the oculomotor group of
muscles, and that Fürbringer, in his description of the eye-muscles of
Petromyzon, asserts that this muscle in this primitive vertebrate {279}form
is not attached as in other vertebrates, but is posterior to the other
muscles, so that he calls it the posterior rather than the superior
oblique. The nature of the change by which the muscle known in the scorpion
as the anterior dorso-plastron muscle (63) was probably converted into the
superior oblique muscle of the vertebrate, is represented in the drawings
Fig. 112, in which also are indicated the dwindling of the median eyes, and
the progressive superiority of the lateral eyes, as well as the
transformation of the recti muscle-group of the scorpion into the muscles
supplied by the oculomotor nerve of the vertebrate.
With respect to the external rectus muscle, it follows naturally that if
the muscles (64) and (65) are to follow suit with the rest of the group and
become attached to the lateral eyes, they must take up an external
position. These two muscles, which always run together, as seen in Fig.
110, A, the one belonging to the prosoma and the other to the mesosoma, are
represented by the mandibular muscle of Miss Platt and the external rectus,
the former derived from the walls of the last pro-otic head-cavity, the
latter from the foremost of the opisthotic head-cavities.
Such, then, is the simple explanation of the origin of the eye-muscles
which follows from my theory, and we see that the successive alterations of
the position of the orbit, and, therefore, of the globe of the eye with its
muscles, as we pass from Thyestes to man, is the natural consequence of the
growth of the frontal bone, _i.e._ of the brain.
THE TRIGEMINAL NERVES AND THE MUSCLES SUPPLIED BY THEM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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