The nervous system of the embryonic head exhibits three ganglionic masses, anterior to the thoracic ganglionic masses; these three masses subsequently amalgamate and form the sub-oesophageal ganglion, which supplies the trophal segments.
The position of the chelicerae of Limulus and of the ganglionic nerve-masses from which they receive their nerve-supply, is closely similar to that of the same structures in Scorpio.
The concentration of nervous matter and ganglionic substance at the oral end of Trematodes is equivalent to the " brain " of the Planarians, but the similar thickening in the scolex of Cestodes is by no means so certainly to be called by that name.
Those Cestodes which possess no very distinct organ of attachment (such, for example, as Gyrocotyle) have no distinct ganglionic thickening more pronounced at one end of the body than at the other; and as these are forms which have retained more primitive features than the rest, and show closer affinity to the Trematodes, it seems highly probable that the complicated nervous thickening found in the scolex, and often compared with the " brain " of other Platyelmia, is a structure sui generis developed within the limits of the sub-class.
Corresponding with each pair of myotomes, and subject to the same alternation, two pairs of spinal nerves arise from the neurochord, namely, a right and left pair of compact dorsal sensory roots without ganglionic enlargement, and a right and left pair of ventral motor roots composed of loose fibres issuing separately from the neurochord and passing directly to their termination on the muscle-plates of the myotomes.