But where did the notochord come from?  I do not know.  It always forms in the embryo out of the entoderm or layer which becomes the lining of the intestine.  Now this is a very peculiar origin for cartilage, and the notochord is a very strange cartilage even if we have not made a mistake in calling it cartilage at all.  My best guess would be that it is simply a thickened portion of the upper median surface of the intestine to keep the “balls” of digesting nutriment or other hard particles in the intestine from “grinding” against the nerve-cord as they are crowded along in the process of digestion.  Once started its elasticity would be a great aid in swimming.

Professor Brooks has called attention to the fact that the higher a group stands in development, the longer its ancestors have maintained a swimming life.  Thus we have noticed that the sponges were the first to settle; then a little later the mass of the coelenterates followed their example.  But the etenophora, the nearest relatives of bilateral animals, have remained free swimming.  Then the flat worms and mollusks took to a creeping mode of life, while the annelids and vertebrates still swam.  Then the annelids settled to the bottom and crept, and all their descendants remained creeping forms.  The vertebrates alone remained swimming, and probably neither they nor their descendants ever crept until they emerged on the land, or as amphibia were preparing for land life.  If this be true, it is a fact worthy of our most careful consideration.  The swimming life would appear to be neither as easy nor as economical as the creeping.  It is certainly hard to believe that food would not have been obtained with less effort and in greater abundance at the bottom than in the water above.  The swimming life gave rise to higher and stronger forms; but did its maintenance give immediate advantage in the struggle for existence?  This is an exceedingly interesting and important question, and demands most careful consideration.  But we shall be better prepared to answer it in a future lecture.

The period of development of mollusks, articulates, and vertebrates, is really one.  They developed to a certain extent contemporaneously.  The development of vertebrates was slow, and they were the last to appear on the stage of geological history.

You must all have noticed that development, during this period, takes on a much more hopeful form than during that described in the last chapter.  Then digestion and reproduction were dominant.  Now muscle is of the greatest importance.  If this fails of development, as in mollusks, the group is doomed to degeneration or at best stagnation.  But we have seen the dawn of a still higher function.  In insects and vertebrates the brain is becoming of importance, and absorbing more and more material.  This is the promise of something vastly higher and better.  Better sense-organs are appearing, fitted to aid in a wider perception of more distant objects.  The vertebrate has discovered the right path; though a long journey still lies before it.  The night is far spent, the day is at hand.