Abstract
1. The sympathetic nervous system and the adjuvant adrenalin-secreting system are found in their earliest form in the annelid kingdom, and consist of cells situated in the central nervous system which are the common ancestors of both, and which are both secretory and nervous in function. 2. These cells are developed in the annelid kingdom parallel with the development of a contractile vascular system, which possesses muscles comparable in physiological actions with the muscle of the vertebrate heart. 3. This vascular muscle is regulated by the processes of the common ancestral cells as well as by their secretory activity. 4. In the primitive form contractile rhythm is an intrinsic property of cardiac muscle; its nerve supply regulates the rhythm, it does not initiate it. The beat is therefore myogenic, not neurogenic. 5. The contractile vascular system of annelids is mainly branchial in function. The vertebrate heart has been derived from it by the growing around of the lateral body folds to form a new ventral surface.
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