114 HISTORY OF CRUSTACEA. CHAP. XI. 



tracted again as superfluous, would certainly be an 

 evidence rather of childish trifling or dictatorial pe- 

 dantry, than of infinite wisdom. But no, I am mis- 

 taken; from the beginning of all things the Creator 

 knew, that one day the inquisitive children of men 

 would grope about after analogies and homologies, and 

 that Christian naturalists would busy themselves with 

 thinking out his Creative ideas ; at any rate, in order 

 to facilitate the discernment by the former that the 

 opercular peduncle of the Serpulce is homologous with 

 a branchial filament, He allowed it to make a detour in 

 its development, and pass through the form of a bar- 

 bate branchial filament. 



The historical record preserved in developmental his- 

 tory is gradually EFFACED as the development strikes into 

 a constantly straigJiter course from the egg to the perfect 

 animal, and it is frequently SOPHISTICATED ty the struggle 

 for existence which the free-living larvce have to undergo. 



Thus as the law of inheritance is by no means strict, 

 as it gives room for individual variations with regard 

 to the form of the parents, this is also the case with 

 the succession in time of the developmental processes. 

 Every father of a family who has taken notice of such 

 matters, is well aware that even in children of the same 

 parents, the teeth, for example, are not cut or changed, 

 either at the same age, or in the same order. Now in 

 general it will be useful to an animal to obtain as 

 early as possible those advantages by which it sustains 

 itself in the struggle for existence. A precocious ap- 

 pearance of peculiarities originally acquired at a later 



