(3) They may be formed as in the last case, but acquire no secondary connection with the peritoneal epithelium (Teleostei, Amniota). In connection with the original attachment to the peritoneal epithelium, a true peritoneal funnel may however be developed (Aves, Lacertilia).
Physiological considerations appear to shew that of these three methods of development the first is the most primitive. The development of the tubes as solid cords can hardly be primary.
A question which has to be answered in reference to the segmental tubes is that of the homology of the secondarily developed peritoneal openings of Amphibia, with the primary openings of the Elasmobranchii. It is on the one hand difficult to understand why, if the openings are homologous in the two types, the original peritoneal attachment should be obliterated in Amphibia, only to be shortly afterwards reacquired. On the other hand it is still more difficult to understand what physiological gain there could be, on the assumption of the non-homology of the openings, in the replacement of the primary opening by a secondary opening exactly similar to it. Considering the great variations in development which occur in undoubtedly homologous parts I incline to the view that the openings in the two types are homologous.
In the majority of the lower Vertebrata the mesonephric tubes have at first a segmental arrangement, and this is no doubt the primitive condition. The coexistence of two, three, or more of them in a single segment in Amphibia, Aves and Mammalia has recently been shewn, by an interesting discovery of Eisig, to have a parallel amongst Chætopods, in the coexistence of several segmental organs in a single segment in some of the Capitellidæ.
In connection with the segmental features of the mesonephros it is perhaps worth recalling the fact that in Elasmobranchii as well as other types there are traces of segmental tubes in some of the postanal segments. In the case of all the segmental tubes a Malpighian body becomes established close to the extremity of the tube adjoining the peritoneal opening, or in an homologous position in tubes without such an opening. The opposite extremity of the tube always becomes attached to the segmental duct.
In many of the segments of the mesonephros, especially in the hinder ones, secondary and tertiary tubes become developed in certain types, which join the collecting canals of the primary tubes, and are provided, like the primary tubes, with Malpighian bodies at their blind extremities.
There can it appears to me be little or no doubt that the secondary tubes in the different types are homodynamous if not homologous. Under these circumstances it is surprising to find in what different ways they take their origin. In Elasmobranchii a bud sprouts out from the Malpighian body of one segment, and joins the collecting tube of the preceding segment, and subsequently, becoming detached from the Malpighian body from which it sprouted, forms a fresh secondary Malpighian body at its blind extremity. Thus the secondary tubes of one segment are formed as buds from the segment behind. In Amphibia (Salamandra) and Aves the secondary tubes develop independently in the mesoblast. These great differences in development are important in reference to the homology of the metanephros or permanent kidney, which is discussed below.
Before leaving the mesonephros it may be worth while putting forward some hypothetical suggestions as to its origin and relation to the pronephros, leaving however the difficult questions as to the homology of the segmental tubes with the segmental organs of Chætopods for subsequent discussion.
It is a peculiarity in the development of the segmental tubes that they at first end blindly, though they subsequently grow till they meet the segmental duct with which they unite directly, without the latter sending out any offshoot to meet them[264]. It is difficult to believe that peritoneal infundibula ending blindly and unprovided with some external orifice can have had an excretory function, and we are therefore rather driven to suppose that the peritoneal infundibula which become the segmental tubes were either from the first provided each with an orifice opening to the exterior, or were united with the segmental duct. If they were from the first provided with external openings we may suppose that they became secondarily attached to the duct of the pronephros (segmental duct), and then lost their external openings, no trace of these structures being left, even in the ontogeny of the system. It would appear to me more probable that the pronephros, with its duct opening into the cloaca, was the only excretory organ of the unsegmented ancestors of the Chordata, and that, on the elongation of the trunk and its subsequent segmentation, a series of metameric segmental tubes became evolved opening into the segmental duct, each tube being in a sort of way serially homologous with the primitive pronephros. With the segmentation of the trunk the latter structure itself may have acquired the more or less definite metameric arrangement of its parts.
Another possible view is that the segmental tubes may be modified derivatives of posterior lateral branches of the pronephros, which may at first have extended for the whole length of the body-cavity. If there is any truth in this hypothesis it is necessary to suppose that, when the unsegmented ancestor of the Chordata became segmented, the posterior branches of the primitive excretory organ became segmentally arranged, and that, in accordance with the change thus gradually introduced in them, the time of their development became deferred, so as to accord to a certain extent with the time of formation of the segments to which they belonged. The change in their mode of development which would be thereby introduced is certainly not greater than that which has taken place in the case of segmental tubes, which, having originally developed on the Elasmobranch type, have come to develop as they do in the posterior part of the mesonephros of Salamandra, Birds, etc.