76 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HOW THE MEDUSA PRODUCES A HYDRA TUBA. 



WE are all of us in the habit of regarding it as a law 

 of nature, that the offspring of any animal shall re- 

 semble the parent that gave it birth. We are not now 

 speaking, gentle reader, of the never-to-be-doubted 

 resemblance which every gossip finds between baby 

 and its mama, until, as is always the case, it is 

 proved to have papa's eyes, and papa's nose, and 

 papa's mouth, but of the more general similitude 

 whereby the kitten is recognized as the young of 

 the cat the foal, of the mare the calf, of the cow; 

 in all of which instances the paternity of the species 

 is clear and undeniable ; and yet some of us may 

 perhaps be startled to learn that nothing can be more 

 erroneous than such a supposition. When Shak- 

 speare tells us that all the world is a stage, on which 

 Man himself plays many parts, his acts being seven 

 ages, the immortal bard did not go far enough, he 

 might have said, that all the world is a stage, on which 

 every animal in its time performs many parts, and 

 that under forms so different, under disguises so dis- 

 similar, that it is not too much to say, that every ani- 

 mal has to be in succession several other animals 

 before it arrives at that condition in which the zoo- 

 logist is pleased to recognize it as being itself. So 



