When we make a comparative study of the embryology of the amphioxus, the frog, the chick, and the rabbit, there cannot, in my opinion, be any further doubt as to the truth of this position, which I have held for thirty years. Hence in the light of the gastræa theory we must regard the features of the amphioxus as the only and real primitive structure among all the vertebrates, departing very little from the palingenetic embryonic form. In the cyclostoma and the frog these features are, on the whole, not much altered cenogenetically, but they are very much so in the chick, and most of all in the rabbit. In the bell-gastrula of the amphioxus and in the hooded gastrula of the lamprey and the frog the germinal layers are found to be closed tubes or vesicles from the first. On the other hand, the chick-embryo (in the new laid, but not yet hatched, egg) is a flat circular disk, and it was not easy to recognise this as a real gastrula. Rauber and Goette have, however, achieved this. As the discoid gastrula grows round the large globular yelk, and the permanent gut then separates from the outlying yelk-sac, we find all the processes which we have shown (diagrammatically) in Figure 1.108—processes that were hitherto regarded as principal acts, whereas they are merely secondary.
Figs. 106 and 107. The visceral embryonnic vesicle (blastocystis or gastrocystis) of a rabbit. Fig. 106—The visceral embryonic vesicle (_blastocystis_ or _gastrocystis_) of a rabbit (the “blastula” or _vesicula blastodermica_ of other writers), _a_ outer envelope (ovolemma), _b_ skin-layer or ectoderm, forming the entire wall of the yelk-vesicle, _c_ groups of dark cells, representing the visceral layer or entoderm. Fig. 107—The same in section. Letters as above. _ d_ cavity of the vesicle. (From _Bischoff._)
The oldest, oviparous mammals, the monotremes, behave in the same way as the reptiles and birds. But the corresponding embryonic processes in the viviparous mammals, the marsupials and placentals, are very elaborate and distinctive. They were formerly quite misinterpreted; it was not until the publication of the studies of Edward van Beneden (1875) and the later research of Selenka, Kuppfer, Rabl, and others, that light was thrown on them, and we were in a position to bring them into line with the principles of the gastræa theory and trace them to the embryonic forms of the lower vertebrates. Although there is no independent food-yelk, apart from the formative yelk, in the mammal ovum, and although its segmentation is total on that account, nevertheless a large yelk-sac is formed in their embryos, and the “embryo proper” spreads leaf-wise over its surface, as in the reptiles and birds, which have a large food-yelk and partial segmentation. In the mammals, as well as in the latter, the flat, leaf-shaped germinal disk separates from the yelk-sac, and its edges join together and form tubes.