III. 



The Recapitulation Theory in Palaeontology. 



\T ATURAL Science is to be congratulated on the publication of an 

 article so opposed to current belief as that of Mr. C. Herbert 

 Hurst on " The Recapitulation Theory," for it has thereby shown 

 that it will not burke views simply because they are unfashionable, 

 but rather that it is ready to afford a free field to all genuine knights- 

 errant who dare to smite the shield of authority. Whether the 

 heterodox opinions prove ultimately right or wrong, their publication 

 is of service as forcing us to consider more carefully than we are apt 

 to do the reasons for the faith that is in us. ISTo doubt there will be 

 many to answer Mr. Hurst'schallenge,some, perhaps, to support him ; 

 out of the melee, truth is most likely to arise if each confines 

 himself to facts within his own knowledge ; here are a few such. 



The heaviest blows of Mr. Hurst fall on the embryologists, or, 

 to speak more accurately, on those who study the embryology of 

 living beings, " without the labour involved in pal^eontological 

 research." Such an attack is undoubtedly deserved in many cases ; 

 but Mr. Hurst himself would have strengthened his position had he 

 been able to bring forward any arguments from the actual history of 

 extinct beings that should upset the conclusions of the neontologists, 

 or that should definitely disprove the dictum — " Ontogeny repeats 

 Phylogeny." This he has not done, and this I do not intend to do 

 for him. In the first place, though it would be easy to show that the 

 genealogies constructed by neontologists were contradictory both of 

 one another and of the facts of palaeontology,^ this would merely 

 prove that somebody had made mistakes, an argument admirably 

 adapted for the daily Press, but not for a scientific journal. In the 

 second place, the very limited amount of accurate palaeontological 

 knowledge that I possess does not enable me to produce any facts 

 opposed to the theory of Recapitulation as understood by most 

 modern biologists. 



First, let us consider the case of Antedon, which .Mr. Hurst 

 dismisses so scornfully. The possession of a stem is, we may admit, 

 an advantage to the larva, and Mr. Hurst's contention that the larval 



1 See a recent article by A. Smith Woodward on " The Forerunners of the 

 Backboned Animals," Natural Science, vol. i., p. 596. 



T3 



