The Evolution of Man, vol 1 by Ernst Haeckel (paper ebook reader .txt) 📕

FIGURE 1.200. Mature human foetus (at the end of pregnancy, in its natural position, taken out of the uterine cavity). On the inner surface of the latter (to the left) is the placenta, which is connected by the umbilical cord with the child’s navel. (From Bernhard Schultze.))

Of the three vesicular appendages of the amniote embryo which we have now described the amnion has no blood-vessels at any moment of its existence. But the other two vesicles, the yelk-sac and the allantois, are equipped with large blood-vessels, and these effect the nourishment of the embryonic body. We may take the opportunity to make a few general observations on the first circulation in the embryo and its central organ, the heart. The first blood-vessels, the heart, and the first blood itself, are formed from the gut-fibre layer. Hence it was called by earlier embryologists the “vascular layer.” In a sense the term is quite correct. But it must not be understood as if all the blood-vessels in the body came from this layer, or as if the whole of this layer were taken up only with the formation of blood-vessels.

Neither of these suppositions is true. Blood-vessels may be formed independently in other parts, especially in the various products of the skin-fibre layer.

The first blood-vessels of the mammal embryo have been considered by us previously, and we shall study the development of the heart in the second volume.

(FIGURE 1.201. Vitelline vessels in the germinative area of a chick-embryo, at the close of the third day of incubation. (From Balfour.) The detached germinative area is seen from the ventral side: the arteries are dark, the veins light. H heart, AA aorta-arches, Ao aorta, R.Of.A right omphalo-mesenteric artery, S.T sinus terminalis, L.Of and R.Of right and left omphalo-mesenteric veins, S.V sinus venosus, D.C ductus Cuvieri, S.Ca.V and V.Ca fore and hind cardinal veins.)

In every vertebrate it lies at first in the ventral wall of the fore-gut, or in the ventral (or cardiac) mesentery, by which it is connected for a time with the wall of the body. But it soon severs itself from the place of its origin, and lies freely in a cavity—the cardiac cavity. For a short time it is still connected with the former by the thin plate of the mesocardium. Afterwards it lies quite free in the cardiac cavity, and is only directly connected with the gut-wall by the vessels which issue from it.

The fore-end of the spindle-shaped tube, which soon bends into an S-shape (Figure 1.202), divides into a right and left branch. These tubes are bent upwards arch-wise, and represent the first arches of the aorta. They rise in the wall of the fore-gut, which they enclose in a sense, and then unite above, in the upper wall of the fore gut-cavity, to form a large single artery, that runs backward immediately under the chorda, and is called the aorta (Figure 1.201

Ao). The first pair of aorta-arches rise on the inner wall of the first pair of gill-arches, and so lie between the first gill-arch (k) and the fore-gut (d), just as we find them throughout life in the fishes. The single aorta, which results from the conjunction of these two first vascular arches, divides again immediately into two parallel branches, which run backwards on either side of the chorda. These are the primitive aortas which we have already mentioned; they are also called the posterior vertebral arteries. These two arteries now give off at each side, behind, at right angles, four or five branches, and these pass from the embryonic body to the germinative area, they are called omphalo-mesenteric or vitelline arteries. They represent the first beginning of a foetal circulation. Thus, the first blood-vessels pass over the embryonic body and reach as far as the edge of the germinative area. At first they are confined to the dark or “vascular”

area. But they afterwards extend over the whole surface of the embryonic vesicle. In the end, the whole of the yelk-sac is covered with a vascular network. These vessels have to gather food from the contents of the yelk-sac and convey it to the embryonic body. This is done by the veins, which pass first from the germinative area, and afterwards from the yelk-sac, to the farther end of the heart. They are called vitelline, or, frequently, omphalo-mesenteric, veins.

These vessels naturally atrophy with the degeneration of the umbilical vesicle, and the vitelline circulation is replaced by a second, that of the allantois. Large blood-vessels are developed in the wall of the urinary sac or the allantois, as before, from the gut-fibre layer.

These vessels grow larger and larger, and are very closely connected with the vessels that develop in the body of the embryo itself. Thus, the secondary, allantoic circulation gradually takes the place of the original vitelline circulation. When the allantois has attached itself to the inner wall of the chorion and been converted into the placenta, its blood-vessels alone effect the nourishment of the embryo. They are called umbilical vessels, and are originally double—a pair of umbilical arteries and a pair of umbilical veins. The two umbilical veins (Figure 1.183 u), which convey blood from the placenta to the heart, open it first into the united vitelline veins. The latter then disappear, and the right umbilical vein goes with them, so that henceforth a single large vein, the left umbilical vein, conducts all the blood from the placenta to the heart of the embryo. The two arteries of the allantois, or the umbilical arteries (Figures 1.183 n and 1.184 n), are merely the ultimate terminations of the primitive aortas, which are strongly developed afterwards. This umbilical circulation is retained until the nine months of embryonic life are over, and the human embryo enters into the world as the independent individual. The umbilical cord (Figure 1.196 al), in which these large blood-vessels pass from the embryo to the placenta, comes away, together with the latter, in the afterbirth, and with the use of the lungs begins an entirely new form of circulation, which is confined to the body of the infant.

(FIGURE 1.202. Boat-shaped embryo of the dog, from the ventral side, magnified about ten times. In front under the forehead we can see the first pair of gill-arches; underneath is the S-shaped heart, at the sides of which are the auditory vesicles. The heart divides behind into the two vitelline veins, which expand in the germinative area (which is torn off all round). On the floor of the open belly lie, between the protovertebrae, the primitive aortas, from which five pairs of vitelline arteries are given off. (From Bischoff.)) There is a great phylogenetic significance in the perfect agreement which we find between man and the anthropoid apes in these important features of embryonic circulation, and the special construction of the placenta and the umbilical cord. We must infer from it a close blood-relationship of man and the anthropomorphic apes—a common descent of them from one and the same extinct group of lower apes.

Huxley’s “pithecometra-principle” applies to these ontogenetic features as much as to any other morphological relations: “The differences in construction of any part of the body are less between man and the anthropoid apes than between the latter and the lower apes.”

This important Huxleian law, the chief consequence of which is “the descent of man from the ape,” has lately been confirmed in an interesting and unexpected way from the side of the experimental physiology of the blood. The experiments of Hans Friedenthal at Berlin have shown that human blood, mixed with the blood of lower apes, has a poisonous effect on the latter; the serum of the one destroys the blood-cells of the other. But this does not happen when human blood is mixed with that of the anthropoid ape. As we know from many other experiments that the mixture of two different kinds of blood is only possible without injury in the case of two closely related animals of the same family, we have another proof of the close blood-relationship, in the literal sense of the word, of man and the anthropoid ape.

(FIGURE 1.203. Lar or white-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar or albimanus), from the Indian mainland (From Brehm.) FIGURE 1.204. Young orang (Satyrus orang), asleep.) The existing anthropoid apes are only a small remnant of a large family of eastern apes (or Catarrhinae), from which man was evolved about the end of the Tertiary period. They fall into two geographical groups—the Asiatic and the African anthropoids. In each group we can distinguish two genera. The oldest of these four genera is the gibbon Hylobates, Figure 1.203); there are from eight to twelve species of it in the East Indies. I made observations of four of them during my voyage in the East Indies (1901), and had a specimen of the ash-grey gibbon (Hylobates leuciscus) living for several months in the garden of my house in Java. I have described the interesting habits of this ape (regarded by the Malays as the wild descendant of men who had lost their way) in my Malayischen Reisebriefen (chapter 11).

Psychologically, he showed a good deal of resemblance to the children of my Malay hosts, with whom he played and formed a very close friendship.

(FIGURE 1.205. Wild orang (Dyssatyrus auritius). (From R. Fick and Leutemann.))

The second, larger and stronger, genus of Asiatic anthropoid ape is the orang (Satyrus); he is now found only in the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Selenka, who has published a very thorough Study of the Development and Cranial Structure of the Anthropoid Apes (1899), distinguishes ten races of the orang, which may, however, also be regarded as “local varieties or species.” They fall into two sub-genera or genera: one group, Dissatyrus (orang-bentang, Figure 1.205), is distinguished for the strength of its limbs, and the formation of very peculiar and salient cheek-pads in the elderly male; these are wanting in the other group, the ordinary orang-outang (Eusatyrus).

(FIGURE 1.206. The bald-headed chimpanzee (Anthropithecus calvus).

Female. This fresh species, described by Frank Beddard in 1897 as Troglodytes calvus, differs considerably from the ordinary A. niger Figure 1.207) in the structure of the head, the colouring, and the absence of hair in parts.)

Several species have lately been distinguished in the two genera of the black African anthropoid apes (chimpanzee and gorilla). In the genus Anthropithecus (or Anthropopithecus, formerly Troglodytes), the bald-headed chimpanzee, A. calvus (Figure 1.206), and the gorilla-like A. mafuca differ very strikingly from the ordinary Anthropithecus niger (Figure 1.207), not only in the size and proportion of many parts of the body, but also in the peculiar shape of the head, especially the ears and lips, and in the hair and colour. The controversy that still continues as to whether these different forms of chimpanzee and orang are “merely local varieties” or “true species”

is an idle one; as in all such disputes of classifiers there is an utter absence of clear ideas as to what a species really is.

Of the largest and most famous of all the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, Paschen has lately discovered a giant-form in the interior of the Cameroons, which seems to differ from the ordinary species (Gorilla gina Figure 1.208), not only by its unusual size and strength, but also by a special formation of the skull. This giant gorilla (Gorilla gigas, Figure 1.209) is six feet eight inches long; the span of its great arms is about nine feet; its powerful chest is twice as broad as that of a strong man.

(FIGURE 1.207. Female chimpanzee (Anthropithecus niger). (From Brehm.) FIGURE 1.208. Female gorilla. (From Brehm.) FIGURE 1.209. Male giant-gorilla (Gorilla gigas), from Yaunde, in the interior of the Cameroons. killed by H. Paschen, stuffed by Umlauff.) The whole structure of this huge anthropoid ape is not merely very similar to that of man, but it is substantially the same.