So strongly do all these different lines of argument point to the origin of vertebrates from arthropods as to make it imperative to reconsider the position of that school of anatomists who derived vertebrates from annelids by reversing the back and front of the animal. Let us not turn the animal over, but re-consider the position, the infundibular tube of the vertebrate still representing the oesophagus of the invertebrate, the cerebral hemispheres and basal ganglia the supra-oesophageal ganglia, the _crura cerebri_ the oesophageal commissures, and the infra-infundibular part of the brain the infra-oesophageal ganglia. It is immediately apparent that just as the invertebrate oesophagus leads into the large cephalic stomach, so the infundibular tube leads into the large cavity of the brain known as the third ventricle, which, together with the other ventricles, forms in the embryo a large anterior dilated part of the neural tube. In the arthropod this cephalic stomach leads into the straight narrow intestine; in the vertebrate the fourth ventricle leads into the straight narrow canal of the spinal cord. In the arthropod the intestine terminates in the anus; in the vertebrate embryo the canal of the spinal cord terminates in the anus by way of the neurenteric canal. Keep the animal unreversed, and immediately the whole mystery of the tubular nature of the central nervous system is revealed, for it is seen that the nervous matter, which corresponds bit by bit with that of the arthropod, has surrounded to a greater or less extent and amalgamated with the tube of the arthropod alimentary canal, and thus formed the so-called central nervous system of the vertebrate. The manner in which the nervous material has invaded the walls of the tube is clearly shown both by the study of the comparative anatomy of the central nervous system in the vertebrate and also by its development in the embryo.