PARASITIC WORMS. 2O5 



becoming a new generation ; the sexual organ has 

 become the sexual animal. 



Now as the individual development of the Clado- 

 nema, and other Medusae similarly propagated, corre- 

 sponds with the systematic series of the Medusa polypes, 

 the only reasonable and credible explanation of the 

 ontogenesis of those Medusae in which heterogenesis 

 occurs, is that, in them, the historical development of 

 the genus has become fixed. Neither the egg nor 

 the hen was created. Before the delicately tinted 

 Medusae populated the primaeval ocean in lonely splen- 

 dour, the Medusa polypes on the constantly changing 

 shores were the sole representatives of the still infant 

 class. Another and very reasonable view is that which 

 Weisman's latest researches tend to support : That 

 polypes were indeed the precursors of the Medusae ; 

 that individual polypes (not merely organs) became 

 Medusas, and that the imperfectly developed intermediate 

 forms were degenerate Medusae, degraded to the condition 

 of apparently mere organs. 



The evolutionary history of the intestinal worms leads 

 to the same reflections and results. These animals, 

 widely differing in their structure, were either created in 

 or with their hosts, or else they have become habituated 

 to them in a natural and direct manner. We may surely 

 disregard the third alternative, that they were led by 

 an innate " obscure impulse." According to our doctrine, 

 the worms now passing the whole or a portion of their 

 lives as parasites on or in other organisms, are descended 

 from free and independent animals, and the periods oc- 

 curring in their development, during which parasitic life 



