366 NATURAL SCIENCE. May, 



see what are "the plain facts of palaeontology," to which it is 

 suggested (p. 281) that somebody's eyes (? mine) are "persistently 

 shut." 



"It is not an occasional accidental parallelism between the onto- 

 geny and the phylogeny which I deny, but the causal relation between 

 the two." (I quote from my previous article, p. 198.) This appears to 

 have been overlooked by Mr. Bather, and the whole of his article is 

 consequently directed against a position which I have never held. I 

 have stood perfectly still, and his explosive bullets have rushed past 

 me with a violence suggestive of a shower of meteorites : his aim 

 was excellent ; not a single stray bullet touched me. 



Mr. Bather admits that "von Baer's law is undoubtedly true" in 

 cases of fraternal relationship, but holds that " there are many objec- 

 tions to supposing that it is equally true " in cases of filial relationship. 

 I had quoted Darwin to show that in the case of the pigeons where 

 the relationship between C. livia and the rest is of this kind (the only 

 case I know of which has been tested) the law is fully applicable. 

 May I therefore ask for, say, half-a-dozen of the best of the " many 

 objections " referred to ? 



In defence of myself against what has now, unfortunately, reached 

 the public eye, I feel bound to correct some of Mr. Bather's misap- 

 prehensions as to my position. To each reply I will prefix the 

 number of the paragraph in his article where the misrepresentation 

 occurs. 



(3. Middle of p. 276.) The larval stem of Antedon, if it be, as I 

 suggested, the modified equivalent of the stalk of the ancestral larva, 

 need not be supposed to be anything other than what Mr. Bather 

 describes, nor yet need any conclusions be drawn from it (as to the 

 stem of its ancestors) which differ in the slightest from the 

 conclusions he has drawn from palaeontological work. 



(3.) I have not ignored "acceleration of development." The 

 antlers of stags were given as an example of it. 



(5. Bottom of page.) Nothing I have said will bear the interpre- 

 tation here put upon it. Each transient ontogenetic stage may 

 be a modified equivalent of a corresponding ontogenetic stage 

 in an ancestor, and may yet be either more complex or less 

 complex, or may even be so completely changed that no resemblance 

 is observable. 



(5. P. 277.) I do not feel bound to suppose, and have never 

 supposed, anything at all comparable with what is here suggested. 

 I do unhesitatingly say that the ontogeny described in Antedon is not 

 an epitome of the ancestral history. There is a truly remarkable 

 parallelism between the ontogeny and the phylogeny as here set forth. 

 It is not a history, inasmuch as the correspondence between the two 

 series is not one which could safely be assumed to exist apart from 

 palaeontological evidence. 



(7.) Let it be assumed that the e^'idence set forth by Darwin 



