Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator

, mentioned above. No sign of a cloacal invagination could be made out with certainty.

The next stage to be studied is shown in surface view in figure 5.

Figure 5A represents a section through the head region of this embryo. Owing to the obliquity of the plane of the section the figure is quite asymmetrical. The pharynx, ph, is lined with a comparatively thin epithelium and opens, on the left, at two places, one the mouth and the other the second gill cleft, g^2. In the dorsal wall of this cleft, as well as in the corresponding wall of the opposite cleft, is seen a thickening of the epithelium; these thickenings, ty, are the rudiments of the thymus gland, whose development may be described in detail in another paper. Compared to the size of the gill clefts the cavity of the pharynx is, at this stage, comparatively small.

Followed caudad the pharynx becomes depressed until, in the region shown in figure 5B, it is a mere narrow slit, g, extending transver