298 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



leather-skin (c<mura), and only secondarily, come into closer 

 relations with the skull. How, in Man, this most simple and 

 primordial rudiment of the primitive skull develops, onto- 

 genetically, from the head-plates, and how, in the mean- 

 time, the anterior extremity of the notochord is enclosed in 

 the base of the skull, has already been explained. (Cf. 

 vol. i. p. 378 ; Figs. 145 and 146, p. 393.) 



The main features in the history of the development of 

 the gill-arches, which must now be regarded as skull-ribs, 

 lias been told. Of the four original rudimentary gill-arches of 

 Mammals (Plates I and VII., Figs. 232-236, p. 243), the first 

 lies between the primitive mouth-opening and the first gin- 

 opening. From the base of this gill-arch the " upper jaw 

 process " develops, and this unites, in the manner already 

 described, with the internal and the external nasal processes 

 on each side, and forms the chief parts of the uppor jaw skele- 

 ton palate-bones, wing-bones, etc. (Cf. p. 24-5 and 268.) The 

 rest of the first gill-arch, now distinguished as the " lower-jaw 

 process," forms out of its base two ear bonelets the hammer 

 (malleus) and the anvil (incus) ; the rest of its mass becomes 

 a long strip of cartilage, called, after its discoverer, " Meckel's 

 cartilage." On the external surface of this cartilage origin- 

 ates, as a surface-bone (formed of cellular matter from the 

 leather-plate), the permanent bony lower jaw. From the 

 base of the second gill-arch in Mammalia originate the 

 third ear bonelet, the stirrup (stapes), and from the subse- 

 quent parts, in order, the stirrup-muscle, the styloid process of 

 the temporal bone, the styloid band, and the small horn of the 

 tongue-bone. Finally, the third gill-arch becomes cartilagin- 

 ous only at its anterior portion, and here, by the union of its 

 two halves, is formed the body of the tongue-bone (copula 



