Between these and the Sponges Dr. Carpenter points out the little intermediate group of the Acanthometrina, extremely minute balls of jelly upon a framework of spicules which radiate in all directions from a common centre.

Between the Spongiada of the lowest sub-kingdom and the Cœlenterata, the sub-kingdom immediately above them, those who have studied the Devonian fossils of Devonshire will know how close and how puzzlingly close is often the general similarity of appearance. Especially the Milleporida and the Favositidæ affect a spongiose structure. The modern Alcyonium digitatum (vulgarly known as "Dead man's toes ") and Millepora tuberculosa are both very sponge-like masses. We do not for a moment wish to affiliate particular corals to particular sponges on

that even the meanest animal must have it he says, "Doubtless had we at once brains But we are very far out in our placed before us the entire series of forms implication. Not only may brains be assumed by the Polycistina, we should be wanting, but a mouth and a stomach. In enabled to discover that they are all the lowest amoeban forms of life one linked together by transitional types." should perhaps say that the creature is all mouth and all stomach. As we pass to the higher forms of life, we find the apparatus becoming gradually specialized for the enjoyment of various kinds of food. Yet even among the crustacea there are some which are miserably deficient in the power of dining, and it is a shocking but truthful statement that in some of the ento-parasitic vermes there is absolutely no digestive system present. This is explicable on the Darwinian theory as the adaptation of creatures by variation and natural selection to the circumstances with which they have come to be surrounded; while surely it is absurd to speak of crustacea and vermes as all created on an ideal plan, when some of them are entirely destitute of stomachs. Surely the theory of creation by special design becomes something worse than the strength of any superficial resemabsurd, when charging itself to explain blance; but we maintain that when strikthe existence of creatures which cannot ing similarities present themselves beflourish and abound, which cannot even tween different classes or different sublive, except in the tissues, in the vitals, in kingdoms, they are much more likely to the heart and brain of other animals. Do be due to development from a common those who advocate this and kindred origin than to creation upon separate theories ever trouble themselves to con- types. The habit of living in colonies, in front the consequences of what they say? which the different members of the sociAccording to them, all these internal ety are as closely united as a man's body parasites, the cause of so much pain, dis- and limbs, is common both to sponges ease and death, must have been created and corals. Besides the ordinary method from the first in the bodies they were des- of reproduction, these creatures and some tined to haunt, in the innocent sheep, in others have another method called fissithe- as yet not guilty — man. This in parity, the method of reproduction by the age of innocence! this before pain splitting. When a creature splits itself and death had been introduced into the almost in half and each fragment rounds world! this by exquisite benevolence, itself off into a new individual, the disthis by glorious design! You cannot be- tinction between parent and child must lieve it, unless all your neighbours are be reduced to a minimum, and when willing to help you, and they are not wil-gemmiparity, or production by budding, ling. is added to production by self-splitting, a Time fails for showing in all the sub-perfect tangle of relationships must be kingdoms of the animal world, or even in a single division of any one of them, the gradations by which different forms are closely united. For the connection between the various groups of the Protozoa, Carpenter On the Microscope will be a useful guide to the student. For the Polycistina, one of those groups, we may take the opinion of Mr. Mungo Ponton. He is an anti-Darwinian. He has written a curious book with a curious title, The Beginning: its When, and its How. In

Rolleston, Op. cit., p. cxxiii.

the result. However, be that as it may, we have here three methods of reproduction, only one of which pervades the whole animal kingdom, reproduction by the union of two distinct elements. Not either of the methods favourable to the stability of species, but the method favourable to variation, since the product of two things unlike each other cannot be exactly like them both. Why was this method selected by nature, in spite of the faults found with it by Milton's genius?* May we not say that it deter* Paradise Lost, book x. ver. 888.

mined its own selection by giving rise to cestor only began to live a great while useful variations, in which the other after the death of his descendants. But methods were unfruitful? From the cu- a single observation clears up the mysmulative inheritance of many advanta- tery. The soft polypes won't fossilize. geous variations creatures would be at Few would care to deny the existence length developed too specialized to ad- of such creatures contemporary with mit of splitting without injury, or of bud- the Silurian Acervularia luxurians, and ding out the entire organism from the thenceforward down to our own times. foot, or side, or cheek of the parent. But, if so, what a multitude of forms has Nevertheless the power of budding was been lost to human recognition, how vast not altogether lost, for crabs and star-fish a slice has been cut out of the genealogcan repair the loss of limbs by budding ical history of the Colenterata! There out fresh ones. The same thing has still remains the apparent difficulty that been observed to take place even in the we should find almost at the beginning of human embryo, and in human beings of fossil records corals so highly developed maturer life extra digits have sprouted as the Acervularia. It would be a diffiagain after amputation. culty, were it in any degree probable that Within the boundaries of the Coelen- the Silurian period was the true beginterata, the stony corals of the Anthozoa ning of fossil history. But in the first show an immense variety of forms linked place, from rocks far older than the Siluritogether by multitudinous minute grada- an we now have the foraminiferous structions. In studying what are commonly ture of the Eozoon Canadense; secondly, known as sea-anemones, most persons we know that repeated research has been are at first surprised to find that while continually pushing back the zone of prisome are perfectly soft, others, very like mordial life into a more and more distant them in general aspect, have a hard stony past; thirdly, we must remember how reskeleton. We know well enough that cently and how gradually the antiquity of hard-hearted men and soft-hearted wo- the higher organisms has been estabmen spring from the same parents. We lished, as of man in particular, of the ought not, then, to wonder at a corre- mammals in general, and of birds; sponding variation in the structure of a polype. Here, again, we have the requisite gradations from absolute softness through a mere granular hardening to a complete continuous consolidation. And if this were not enough to show us how Nature, as De Quatrefages says, had been feeling her way to a conclusion, we have the abiding, continually repeated evidence of the process of development in each individual, for in their youth all the corallaria alike are soft-bodied polypes. By degrees they acquire their appropriate granulations, their solid walls, their cycles of septa, costa, columella, pali, and synapticulæ, the tabulæ, the vesicular tissue, and the epitheca. By degrees only do they acquire a right in these hard names, nor yet do any ever acquire a right in them all, but some in many, some in a few, and some in only one. Be it granted that while the present argument tends to show that a soft polype was the ancestor of all the corallaria, we are confronted with the circumstances that all the soft polypes are modern, and that the most complicated stony corals range back through millions of years to the Silurian period. It looks, at the first glance, as if the an

M. Edwards and J. Haime, Histoire naturelle des Coralliaires, c. i. p. 7.

fourthly, it is obvious that time has a great effect in obliterating the traces of life, since in the Upper Oolite we can recognize the existence of birds by the bones and feathers they have left, whereas in the far older Trias (Keuper) we have as yet no memorials of them but their foot-prints. And lastly, in the relation of animal to vegetable life we have a conclusive proof that there were living things upon the globe prior to any of which fossil remains have hitherto been found. The oldest known fossil is the fossil of an animal structure. On what did that animal support life? Unless the nature of things has been altered in the meanwhile, which there is not the shadow of a reason for supposing, vegetable life must have preceded animal life upon the globe for the simple reason that animals cannot live upon soups made of stones and water seasoned with sunlight, while vegetables can.

The inference from all these considerations is that there is not the slightest difficulty in believing that a multitude of forms of the fleshy polypes lived in the pre-Silurian age, ancestral to the simple and to the more or less complicated stony corals which have flourished since.

Of persons bearing certain names we are sometimes pleased to say that such

an one is a man of very old family, ignor- | shining bells, all instinct with life and ing the fact that the ragged crossing- sometimes with living fire. With the sweeper, who has no name to boast of valuable assistance of Mr. Hincks and but a nick-name, is a man of a family pre- Professor Allman, the reproductive polycisely as old. He has not kept the pite may be traced through a series of records of his forefathers, he cannot transitional forms in different species point to a fossil ancestry enshrined in from a mere adherent sac to the free marble, and we think that he has none. medusiform zooid, so surprising in its We deem of him as a creature of yester- tiny loveliness as it glides about or sinks day, sprung from the mud in which he or rises in the water like a transparent plies his toil. You will observe how this parachute or crystal vase. Between the prejudice affects men's minds on the free swimming bell polypite devoted to whole question of genealogical history. reproduction and the stationary polypite Nothing but their own actual presence at devoted to nutrition, parts. one might aleach successive birth through thousands most say, of the same individual, though or millions of years would suffice to sat- in former times regarded as quite differisfy some of these sceptics as to the con- ent animals, there is in fact the closest nection by descent between two different connection even in form. The swimming forms. bell is but a disguise, a sort of petticoat and crinoline, useful perhaps but not universal-a fashion, one might say, not abruptly introduced, but, like the petticoat, gradually developed, since there are stationary polypites with the beginning of such an expansion, and free polypites without it.

Passing from the Anthozoa to the Hydrozoa, we have to observe the points of likeness between the two orders, the Discophora or Medusa, and the Hydroida. To the Discophores belong the large jelly-fishes, one of which, the Cyanæa Arctica, is said to attain a diameter of seven feet and a half. The great Discophores In the sub-kingdom of the Vermes and the tiny hydroids present parallel there is the class of the Gephyræa, so courses of development. For these and called from a Greek word signifying those alike a polypite affixed and sta-"bridge," because this class bridges over tionary buds out a medusa form to the interval between the Vermes and the swim freely in the waters, which in turn Echinodermata.* sends forth a brood of ciliated embryos, and these after a while choose some point of attachment, and develop into stationary polypites to bud forth a new generation of medusæ.*

In some genera of both groups the stationary polypite is wanting. The medusa is developed direct from the egg of the medusa. The suppression of certain stages of development in the life-history of an animal is not uncommon. Its advantage may easily be comprehended. By it a creature attains maturity sooner, and is therefore sooner capable of defending itself against enemies and propagating its species. Such a variation, therefore, natural selection would naturally select, while other theories stammer helplessly in trying to explain it.†

In the Hydroida a chain of resemblances will be found binding together the various genera and species. The chitinous envelope, sometimes wanting, sometimes extremely simple, in other cases becomes a miniature tree, a maze of fairy foliage adorned with exquisite cups or

The Popular Science Review, April 1871. Art. "Discophores," by the Rev. Thomas Hincks.

+ See Facts for Darwin. By Fritz Müller. Chapter on the Progress of Evolution." Translated by Dallas.

Of the latter sub-kingdom Dr. Thomas Wright, in his Monograph published by the Palæontographical Society for 1856, remarks: "No class of the animal kingdom more clearly exhibits a gradation of structure than the Echinodermata; for while some remain rooted to the sea-bottom, and in this sessile condition and other points of structure resemble the Polypifera, others exhibit the true rayed forms, clothed in prickly armour, which characterize the central groups of this class. These conduct us through a series of beautiful gradations, to soft elongated organisms whose forms mimic the Ascidian Mollusca; whilst others have the long cylindrical body and annulose condition of the skin, with the reptatory habits of the apodous Annelida.”

Since this was written, the Sipunculidæ and others after considerable controversy have been removed from the Echinodermata to the Gephyræan class of worms above-mentioned. Considering the astonishing difference between the common earthworm and a sea-urchin, it is surely a circumstance requiring some

* See Rolleston, Forms of Animal Life, p. cxxxi.; and for the points of resemblance to Echinodermata in the Platyelminthes and Rotifera, see note pp. 153 &c.

feature in animal metamorphosis generally is the greatness of the change in both the external and internal character of the organism which it involves. The gradual conversion of one species of animal into another, as of an ass into a horse, or even of one genus into another, as of a hare into a dog, would not involve alterations of structure so great as those which are thus embraced in the life-history of one and the same individual being."*

explanation that forms should exist the like the offspring of the starfish and the affinities of which lie doubtfully between echinus, it is a little free-swimming ciliated the two. zooid. From this estate it passes into the The Echinoderms are divided into condition of a pedunculated crinoid, and four classes, the Crinoidea - Asteroidea, finally drops off its stalk and becomes Echinoidea, and Holothurioidea. The free again. When the life of one small lowest of these, the Crinoidea, were ex- obscure animal presents changes so retremely abundant in the Silurian and De-markable, and when in fact the lives of vonian periods. They are now exceed-all animals present changes which would ingly rare. It may seem rather damaging be equally remarkable were they less fato the theory of evolution that thus early miliar, all idea of improbability or imposamong our fossil records we should find sibility must surely be discarded as atthe beautiful stone-lilies in high perfec-taching in any degree to the theory of evtion, with their long jointed stems chan-olution. Mr. Mungo Ponton, to whom we nelled and embossed in various patterns, have before referred as an anti-Darwintheir cups of ingenious mosaic, their ian witness, makes the following most branching arms and delicate filaments. pertinent remark: "The most striking But the existence of these highly organized stone-lilies in the Silurian period is in truth of great importance to the evolution theory. The whole range of fossil records may be said to have established this general law, that in the history of any order or family of animals, the genera and species gradually increase in number till they attain a maximum, and from that maximum gradually decline till they finally die out. Thus the trilobites become most abundant about The Asteroidea are divided into two the middle of the Paleozoic series of sub-classes, the Ophiuridæ and the Asterocks, and are almost, if not altogether, riadæ, distinguished among other things extinct at the close of the upper Palæo- by the relation of their arms or rays to zoic series. Thus oysters, which in the the central disk. The arms in the Ophicretaceous period numbered hundreds of uridæ contain no portion of the digestive species, are every year becoming less and reproductive apparatus as they do in considerate of the wants of their human the Asteriada. In the Ophiuride the congeners in other words, are obviously genus Astrophyton presents us with five going through the process of gradually rays branching dichotomously from their dying out. Apply this law to the case of the Crinoids, once so abundant, now so scarce, and the suggestion arises that half their history may be pre-Silurian, buried in an unknown past, during which they were rising from scarcity to abundance, as since then they have been sinking from abundance to scarcity.

roots, as the rays branch from their bases in the Comatula. Herein we have a striking link between this class and the Crinoidea. On the other hand, with members of its own sub-class, the Ophiocomas or brittle-stars, Astrophyton is said by Forbes to be connected by gradational forms of the genus Trichaster. The In another way the Crinoids furnish re- Ophiocoma passes easily into the Ophimarkable evidence in favour of the evolu-ura. The Luidia, famous, like the brittletion theory. The Antedon, alias Coma- stars, for shedding its arms at those who tula, alias Featherstar, is a Crinoid. But attempt to capture it, itself an Asteriad, the long peduncle or foot-stalk, so char- links the Asteriada with the Ophiuras. acteristic of its class, is wanting. It is On the other side, the genus Goniaster free and unattached like the common connects the Asteriada with the Echistarfish, which it also resembles in pos- nidæ or sea-urchins. Among these a sessing five arms, although these arms multitude of forms, round, oval, heartbifurcate very close to the base and seem shaped, flat, dome-like, conical or unduto be ten in number. Now, if anyone lating, are so interlaced and bound_tosupposes it impossible for a free-swim-gether by resemblances where most they ming starfish to have been developed differ, by the slightness of the differences from a pedunculated crinoid, the comatu

la gives him his answer. In its larval stage, like the offspring of the polype,

The Beginning, its When and its How, p. 241.

↑ History of British Star-fishes, p. 68.