A comparison of the neural arch at this stage with the arch in the adult, and in the stage last described, shews that the greater part of the neural arch of the adult is formed of membrane-bone, there being preformed in cartilage only a small basal part, a dorsal process, and paired key-stones below the ligamentum longitudinale superius.
The hæmal arches (Plate 42, fig. 78) are still largely cartilaginous, and rest upon the sheath of the notochord. They are invested by a thick layer of bone. The bony layer investing the neural and hæmal arches is prolonged to form a continuous investment round the vertebral portions of the notochord (Plate 42, fig. 78). This investment is at the sides prolonged outwards into irregular processes (Plate 42, fig. 78), which form the commencement of the outer part of the thick but cellular osseous cylinder forming the middle part of the vertebral body.
The intervertebral cartilages are much larger than in the earlier stage (Plate 42, figs. 77 and 79), and it is by their growth that the intervertebral constrictions of the notochord are produced. They have ceased to be continuous with the cartilage of the arches, the intervening portion of the vertebral body between the two being only formed of bone. They are not yet divided into two masses to form the contiguous ends of adjacent vertebræ.
Externally, the part of each cartilage which will form the hinder end of a vertebral body is covered by a tube of bone, having the form of a truncated funnel, shewn in longitudinal section in Plate 42, fig. 77, and in transverse section in Plate 42, fig. 79.
At each end, the intervertebral cartilages are becoming penetrated and replaced by beautiful branched processes from the homogeneous bone which was first of all formed in the perichondrium (Plate 42, fig. 77).
This constitutes the latest stage which we have had.
Gegenbaur (No. 6) has described the vertebral column in a somewhat older larva of 18 centims.
The chief points in which the vertebral column of this larva differed from ours are: (1) the disappearance of all trace of the primitive vertebral constriction of the notochord; (2) the nearly completed constriction of the notochord in the intervertebral regions; (3) the complete ossification of the vertebral portions of the bodies of the vertebræ, the terminal so-called intervertebral portions alone remaining cartilaginous; (4) the complete ossification of the basal portions of the hæmal and neural processes included within the bodies of the vertebræ, so that in the case of the neural arch all trace of the fact that the greater part was originally not formed in cartilage had become lost. The cartilage of the dorsal spinous processes was, however, still persistent.
The only points which remain obscure in the later history of the vertebral column are the history of the notochord and of its sheath. We do not know how far these are either simply absorbed or partially or wholly ossified.
Götte in his memoir on the formation of the vertebral bodies of the Teleostei attempts to prove (1) that the so-called membrana elastica externa of the Teleostei is not a homogeneous elastica, but is formed of cells, and (2) that in the vertebral regions ossification first occurs in it.