Abstract
THE object of the author was to establish the fact that the system of blood-containing spaces pervading the body in Mollusca and in Arthropoda was not, as sometimes (and indeed usually) supposed, equivalent to the coelom or perivisceral space of such animals as the Chætopoda and the Vertebrata, but was in reality a distended and irregularly swollen vascular system— the equivalent of the blood-vascular system of Chætopoda and Vertebrata. Hence he proposed to call the body-spaces of Mollusca and Arthropoda “hæmocœl,” in contradistinction to “cœlom.” It had been held by previous investigators that in Mollusca and Arthropoda the cœlom and the vascular system were united into one set of spaces—whether by a process of gradual fusion, or owing to the fact that the two systems had never been differentiated from a common original space representing them both in the ancestors of these two great phyla, the author stated that he had been led to the view which he now formulated by his discovery of distinct spaces in both Mollusca and Arthropoda, which appear to be the true cœlom, and are separate from the swollen vascular system.
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The Cælom and the Vascular System of Mollusca and Arthropoda 1 . Nature 37, 498 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/037498a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/037498a0