THE DEVONIAN AGE. 



95 



have united in the small modern group of king-crabs, 

 while on the other hand, there are points of resemblance, 

 as already stated, between Trilobites and Isopods, and 

 the king-crabs had already begun to exist, since one 

 species is now known in the Upper Silurian. So 

 puzzling are these various relationships, that one 

 naturalist of the derivationist school has recently 

 attempted to solve the difficulty by suggesting that 

 the Trilobites are allied to the spiders ! Thus nature 

 sports with our theories, showing us in some cases, as 

 in the corals and fishes, partnerships split up into 

 individuals, and in others distinct lines of being con- 

 verging and becoming lost in one slender thread. 

 Barrande, the great palaeontologist of Bohemia, has 

 recently, in an elaborate memoir on the Trilobites, 

 traced these and other points through all their struc- 

 tures and their whole succession in geological time 

 thereby elaborating a most powerful inductive argu- 

 ment against the theory of evolution, and concluding 

 that, so far from the history of these creatures favour- 

 ing such a theory, it seems as if expressly contrived 

 to exclude its possibility. 



• But, while the gigantic Eurypterids and ornate 

 Trilobites of the Devonian were rapidly approaching 

 their end, a few despised little crustaceans, — repre- 

 sented by the Amphipeltis of New Brunswick and 

 Kampecaris of Scotland, — were obscurely laying the 

 foundation of a new line of beings, that of the Stoma- 

 pods, destined to culminate in the Squillas and their 

 allies, which, however different in structure, are 



