216 ZOOPHYTES. 



word may be conceded as the most expressive, if not the most appropriate, 

 of the event. How far that influence may extend, whether to selection of 

 any particular embryo or foetus, to be ushered into existence, and the re- 

 servation of others, it is vain to conjecture. However, we are entitled to 

 assume that the young successively discharged are not in their natural 

 order, from the great disparity that appears among them. 



Some may ask, — Is not all this purely the result of accident ? for, 

 may it not be concluded that, by simple distension of the parent, the cor- 

 pusculum, embryo, or foetus, is conveyed into the tentacula, and that, 

 either in its progress thither, or in return to the stomach, if not har- 

 boured there, that is in the stomach, it is discharged by chance. This 

 would be a plausible argument were its conditions granted. But such 

 postulates are not recognized. On these occasions, it is not known that 

 the parent is distended by water. The young are sometimes disgorged 

 with the rejected food, which affords much probability of their occupying 

 the stomach. There is greater difficulty in accounting for their presence 

 in the tentacula, and uniformly in the lower half of the circle formed by 

 them, which is well exposed by the parent, amply displayed, as adhering 

 horizontally to the side of a glass vessel. 



We must always beware of allowing too much to animal instinct, a 

 great portion of which would be required in allotting so many different 

 powers and selections. 



The general provisions of Nature are directed to the safety of the 

 early embryo and of the later foetus, in their connection with the parent. 

 Thence of the corpusculum or gemmule, which, as we see in activity, re- 

 mounts towards the original condition, the difficulty of its preservation, 

 should it be exposed, must be evident. Nevertheless, there are some 

 stages, wherein, as we have observed, premature production is not clearly 

 injurious, and others wherein artificial birth is not fatal to the young. 



Thus, on July 25, the tip of a tentaculum containing an embryo, was 

 severed from the specimen represented Plate XLV. Next day the sup- 

 posed embryo was expelled as a foetus. It adhered the day after, dis- 

 playing twelve very irregular tentacula. On the 9th of August it fed, 

 and on the 12th it was delineated. — Plate XLVII. fig. 4; front, fig. 5 ; 



