Fig.78. Section of a young sagitta. Fig. 78—Section of a young sagitta. (From _ Hertwig._) _dh_ visceral cavity, _ik_ and _ak_ inner and outer limiting layers, _mv_ and _mp_ inner and outer middle layers, _lk_ body-cavity, _dm_ and _vm_ dorsal and visceral mesentery.
All animals in which the body-cavity demonstrably arises in this way from the primitive gut (vertebrates, tunicates, echinoderms, articulates, and a part of the vermalia) were comprised by the Hertwigs under the title of enterocœla, and were contrasted with the other groups of the pseudocœla (with false body-cavity) and the cœlenterata (with no body-cavity). However, this radical distinction and the views as to classification which it occasioned have been shown to be untenable. Further, the absolute differences in tissue-formation which the Hertwigs set up between the enterocœla and pseudocœla cannot be sustained in this connection. For these and other reasons their cœlom-theory has been much criticised and partly abandoned. Nevertheless, it has rendered a great and lasting service in the solution of the difficult problem of the mesoderm, and a material part of it will certainly be retained. I consider it an especial merit of the theory that it has established the identity of the development of the two middle layers in all the vertebrates, and has traced them as cenogenetic modifications back to the original palingenetic form of development that we still find in the amphioxus. Carl Rabl comes to the same conclusion in his able Theory of the Mesoderm, and so do Ray-Lankester, Rauber, Kupffer, Ruckert, Selenka, Hatschek, and others. There is a general agreement in these and many other recent writers that all the different forms of cœlom-construction, like those of gastrulation, follow one and the same strict hereditary law in the vast vertebrate stem; in spite of their apparent differences, they are all only cenogenetic modifications of one palingenetic type, and this original type has been preserved for us down to the present day by the invaluable amphioxus.
But before we go into the regular cœlomation of the amphioxus, we will glance at that of the arrow-worm (_Sagitta_), a remarkable deep-sea worm that is interesting in many ways for comparative anatomy and ontogeny. On the one hand, the transparency of the body and the embryo, and, on the other hand, the typical simplicity of its embryonic development, make the sagitta a most instructive object in connection with various problems. The class of the _chætogatha,_ which is only represented by the cognate genera of _Sagitta_ and _ Spadella,_ is in another respect also a most remarkable branch of the extensive vermalia stem. It was therefore very gratifying that Oscar Hertwig (1880) fully explained the anatomy, classification, and evolution of the chætognatha in his careful monograph.