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PALEONTOLOGY AND THE RECAPITULATION ‘THEORY. 
By HE. R. CuMINGS. 
In reply to a severe critique of the recapitulation theory, or biogenetic 
law, by Hurst (30), Bather remarks that “It the embryologists had not 
forestalled them, the paleontologists would have had to invent the theory 
of recapitulation.” (1) This may be considered as a fair sample of the 
general attitude of paleontologists of the Hyatt school, to which Bather 
belongs, toward the recapitulation theory. 
Even the more conservative paleontologists, while inclined to use the 
theory cum grano salis, recognize the weight of evidence that Hyatt and 
his coworkers in the realm of paleobiology, have brought together, as is 
evidenced by the following quotation from Zittel (65): “Nevertheless 
embyronic types are not entirely wanting among invertebrates. The Pale- 
ozoic Belinuridze are bewilderingly like the larvae of the living Limulus. 
The pentacrinoid larva of Antedon is nearer many fossil crinoids than the 
full grown animal. . . . . Among pelecypods the stages of early youth 
of oysters and Pectinidse may be compared with Paleozoic Aviculidz. 
Among brachiopods, according to Beecher, the stages which living Tere- 
bratulidee pass through in the development of their arm-skeleton correspond 
with a number of fossil genera. The beautiful researches of Hyatt, Wiir- 
tenburger and Branco, have shown that all Ammonites and Ceratites pass 
through a goniatite stage, and that the inner whorls of an Ammonite con- 
stantly resemble, in form, ornament and suture line the adult condition of 
some previously existing genus or other.” 
In violent coatrast with this full acceptance, or this guarded ac- 
ceptance of the theory on the part of the paleontologists, is the position of 
a considerable school of embryologists and zoologists. Perhaps no one 
has put the case against the theory more baldly and forcibly than Mont- 
gomery in his recent book on ‘An Analysis of Racial Descent” (42). He 
says: “The method is wrong in principle, to compare an adult stage of 
, 
one organism with an immature stage of another.” And again: ‘“There- 
fore we can only conclude that the embryogeny does not furnish any re- 
capitulation of the phylogeny, not even a recapitulation marred at oceca- 
[20—23003 ] 
