124 THE MICROSCOFIST IN BERMUDA. 



utility or function of these snapping members lias never yet 

 been found out. We shall have occasion later to notice very 

 similar organs belonging to another marine animal, and to speak 

 of their probable use. 



The Echinus produces a great quantity of eggs. In many 

 maritime countries they are collected and eaten by the poorer 

 classes. Now, what is very strange about these eggs is that they 

 do not develop into the Echinus, nor into anything at all like it. 

 The progeny is lively little creatures, almost microscopic in 

 size, that swim about in the water by means of cilia, or minute 

 hairs, on various parts of the body. Instead of being five-sided 

 like the parents, they are two-sided like nearly all the rest of the 

 world. They have two eyes, organs in pairs, a mouth, a big 

 stomach, and eight spiny legs projecting downwards. After a 

 time there begins to appear on one side of this creature's stomach, 

 a flat round disk, which grows more and more dish-shaped, with 

 the markings of five distinct segments. Then the saucer-like 

 disk puts out five arms, then five clusters of rudimentary spines ; 

 all the while gradually enclosing the stomach of the poor Pluteus, 

 which now begins to lose its legs, its mouth, and everything else 

 that is of any use to it. Finally the parasite completes its little 

 round shell, makes a new mouth on the side of the stomach last 

 enclosed, discards now all of its old nurse, and settles down to 

 the bottom to begin the new life of the slow creeping Echinus. 



Here, it strikes me, is one of the strangest transformations in 

 all the course of animal existence ; one creature producing, in 

 the ordinary course of generation, an entirely different being, 

 perfect in all its life and parts, out of which, in the manner of 

 an excrescence, grows the parent form again. If here is not a 

 puzzle for the Darwinians, then I fail to appreciate the case. In 

 accordance with what law of inheritance is it, that the Echinus 

 lays eggs which hatch into another order of beings? By what 

 principle of the natural selection of variations useful and advan- 

 tageous, has it come about that the Pluteus develops in its vitals 

 a little monster that literally eats it up alive? That a stationary 

 animal like the Echinus should develop, in its mode of genera- 

 tion, some means of more widely scattering its progeny, I can 



