498 CHARLES W. HARGITT 
results in every detail, so far as the general facts are concerned. 
I think it may now be regarded as beyond doubt or cavil that 
these results, anomalous as they may appear, are absolutely normal 
and conclusive. Furthermore, when analogous cases to which 
I had directed attention, and others to be cited in a later con- 
nection, are taken into consideration, it seems rather strange that 
“early cleavage differing widely from what we have come to 
think as typical’ should be given as adequate grounds for a reéx- 
amination of the case! However, when it is recalled that, with 
certain investigators, it is more important to reduce vital phenom- 
ena to a set of formulae, or to corral all development within a 
common law than to recognize facts as they are, the wonder is 
less strange than it might at first seem! But additional facts 
are now available from a most unexpected source, and of such 
character as to remove any further grounds for question or doubt. 
Somewhat over a year ago I had the good fortune to receive 
from Mr. Edgar J. Bradley, of Adelaide, Australia, a collection 
of hydroids, and along with them several colonies of Pennaria 
australis Bale, together with the meduse and eggs, which had been 
taken in tow-nets just at the height of the breeding season. The 
only feature of regret as to the eggs is that they had not been 
preserved in other than weak formalin, in order to have made 
them available for cytological study. But, as it is, they show in 
surface study the external aspects of developmental behavior to 
such perfection as to leave little to be desired. Figures 5 to 8 
are sketches of a few of these stages, which speak for themselves. 
As will be seen at a glance, they duplicate in a most striking way 
similar stages in the development of Pennaria tiarella. If one 
were to pass under review separate séries of eggs of the two spe- 
cies, without pains to have critically determined them in advance, 
it would be practically impossible to say which belonged to the 
one species and which to the other. There are the same ecto- 
sarcal features,—papille, bridges, strands, etc., in both; the same 
bizarre, amoeboid characters, the same anomalous phases of 
cleavage, ‘every egg a law unto itself’, and finally the same end 
resultant, a normal embryo. Later phases of development of 
the Australian species were not present, hence further compari- 
