old and more popularly know division of animals into vertebrata and
invertebrata scarcely represents the facts of the case, that the
primary division should be into protozoa and metazoa, and that the
vertebrata are one of several groups of metazoa with a fundamental
bilateral symmetry and imperfect metameric segmentation.
The rabbit is one of the vertebrata, and, in common with all the other
animals collected under this head, it has--
(a) A skeletal axis (the vertebral column) between its central
nervous system and its body cavity. In the adult rabbit this
consists of a chain of vertebrae, but in the embryo (i.e., the
young rabbit before birth) it is represented by a continuous chord,
the notochord, and it remains as such in some of the lowest
vertebrata throughout life. In other words, in these lower
vertebrata, the vertebral axis is not metameric.
(b) A dorsal and -Tubular_ nervous axis. (Section 131, the central
canal)
(c) It has, though in the embryo only, certain slits between the
throat and the exterior, like the gill slits of a fish. Such
slits are-- with one or two remarkable exceptions outside the
sub-kingdom-- distinctly vertebrate features, and remain, of course,
in fishes throughout life.
The presence of true cartilage and bone mark a vertebrate, but
vertebrata occur in which -these tissues- [bone] -are- [is] absent.