152 MEMORANDA. 
employing French measures were, Ist, that I considered them 
infinitely more convenient and uniform than our own; and, 
2nd, because prior to undertaking the labour of introducing 
M. de Quatrefages’ essay into this country, an energetic 
attempt was made to bring about the employment of the 
decimal system in England. The reviewer’s remarks must 
apply equally well to those who use the French measures in 
their laboratories, and register temperatures by the centigrade 
thermometer. 
The second matter which appears to have aroused my re- 
viewer's ire relates to my opinion that geneagenesis and 
metamorphosis should not be intimately associated. This 
view he stigmatises as ‘ puerile,”’ and yet does not advance a 
single fact in support of his conclusion, although he certainly 
does afford what I presume he would term a reason. , To the 
latter, which is truly about as sublimely comprehensive a 
generalisation as has been framed for some time, I would 
respectfully request attention. It is as follows :—‘‘ The 
intimate association of metamorphosis and geneagenesis is 
nndoubted, both being part of a series of changes undergone 
by a living being in thecycle of its existence.” 
However pretty the foregoing may appear (and I confess 
that at first sight it read so well and impressed me so forcibly 
that I almost cried peccavi), it hardly stands the test of 
analysis. If by the “cycle of its existence” the author 
means the entire life of an independent individual, then the 
expression means nothing, masmuch as geneagenesis would 
extend beyond such a term. I take it, therefore, that this 
“ eycle of existence” embraces the period between the two 
ova, and upon this view I still contend that, although there 
may be a sort of abstract relationship between the two phe- 
nomena, that association is certainly not intimate. I conceive 
of metamorphosis proper as that process by which an in- 
dividual, in the ordinary sense of the word, is brought from 
the condition of ovum to the final phase which, as an 
individual, it is permitted to attain. Geneagenesis, to my 
mind, is a kindred but, as it were, adventitious phenomenon, 
which steps in to complete what I should term the “ zoo- 
logical individuality ” of the being im which it presents itself. 
My idea may or may not be in accordance with that finely 
drawn code of metaphy sical distinctions which some 
naturalists delight in; and though I am not yet convinced that 
it is puerile, I will not say that there is a shade of senility 
about my reviewer’s censures. The development cf thought 
through the medium of the brain, and of fiippancy of expres- 
sion through the intervention of the tongue, are both the re- 
