CHAPTER VI - HOMOLOGIES OF THE ARTICULATE SKELETON

Summary

We have taken the vertebrate skeleton first, only because this department is most familiar. But in reality, the most beautiful illustrations of essential identity of structure in the midst of infinite diversity of adaptive modification for different functions and habits of life, and therefore of common origin from a primal form, are found in the department of articulates. I use the old Cuvierian department articulata, rather than the more modern arthropods, because the former includes worms also. Now, whether worms should be thus included with arthropods, or deserve a whole department to themselves it matters not for our purposes. It is generally admitted that arthropods probably descended from marine worms. They all have the same general plan of skeletal structure. It will suit my purpose, therefore, to regard worms as the lowest form of jointed animals.

Here, then, we have an entirely different plan of structure—a different style of architecture and different mechanical principles of machinery. Instead of a skeleton within and muscles acting on the outside, we have the skeleton on the outside, and muscles acting from within. Instead of two cavities, a neural and visceral, the skeleton forms but one cavity, in which all organs are inclosed and protected. Instead of finding the nerve-axis on the dorsal aspect of the body, we find it on the ventral aspect.