ONTOGENY. 33 
fossils, other records of the history of the origin of organ- 
isms, which in many cases are of no less value, nay, in 
several cases are of much greater value, than fossils. By 
far the most important of these other records of creation is, 
without doubt, ontogeny, that is, the history of the develop- 
ment of the organic individual (embryology and metamor- 
phology). It briefly repeats in great and marked features 
the series of forms which the ancestors of the respective 
individuals have passed through from the beginning of their 
tribe. We have designated the paleontological history of 
the development of the ancestors of a living form as the 
history of a tribe, or phylogeny, and we may therefore thus 
enunciate this exceedingly important biogenetic fundamental 
principle: “Ontogeny is a short and qu'ck repetition, or 
recapitulation, of Phylogeny, determined by the laws of In- 
heritance and Adaptation.” As every animal and every 
plant from the beginning of its individual existence passes 
through a series of different forms, it indicates in rapid 
succession and in general outlines the long and slowly 
changing series of states of form which its progenitors have 
passed through from the most ancient times. (Gen. Morph. 
i 6, 110, 300.) 
It is true that the sketch which the ontogeny of or- 
ganisms gives us of their phylogeny is in most cases more 
or less obscured, and all the more so the more Adaptation, 
in the course of time, has predominated over Inheritance, 
and the more powerfully the law of abbreviated inheritance, 
and tue law of correlative adaptation, have exerted their 
influence. However, this does not lessen the great value 
which the actual and faithfully preserved features of that 
sketch possess. Ontogeny is of the most inestimable value 
