ITI. 
The Recapitulation Theory in Paleontology. 
A palates 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. No doubt there will be 
many to answer Mr. Hurst’schallenge, some, perhaps, to support him ; 
out of the mélée, 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 paleontological 
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 palzontology,! 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 paleontological 
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. 
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