THE KING CRAB'S GRANDFATHER. 191 



lus Pol-y-phe-mus. It seems to be essentially a wide basin with 

 a small and spike-like handle. It is in fact employed by the 

 fisherman for removing water from his boat. The same objects 

 are strewn along the beach all the way to Charleston. A few 

 years ago, Professor A. S. Packard determined to make the 

 acquaintance of the King Crab family and study his pedigree. 

 He found very few printed documents on this strange subject, 

 and he therefore betook himself to a method of investigation 

 at which you will certainly be amused. He studied the King 

 Crab's eggs. He studied them seriously and thoroughly by 

 the aid of microscopes. More strictly speaking, he studied 

 the progressive development of the embryo within the egg. 

 He believed for many others so believe that the several em- 

 bryonic stages are pictures of the ancestors of the animal. He 

 believed that the first trace of an embryonic form would be a 

 picture of the remotest ancestor either in its embryonic or 

 adult stage ; and that the phases presented by the later stages 

 of the embryo would be pictures of later ancestors. I will 

 tell you what he found out, and you may believe that it 

 means what he says it does, or you may find out a more 

 probable meaning. 



Professor Packard discovered that the earlier embryo of 

 the King Crab shows a striking resemblance to the early stages 

 of soft-shelled shrimps and low fresh water crustaceans now 

 living ; and that in a later stage, the embryo of the King Crab 

 was strikingly like certain Tril'obites found fossil in the Cam- 

 brian strata. There are at least three genera of such Trilo- 

 bites Ag-nos f -tus and Sa'-o from the bottom of the Cambrian, 

 and Tri-nu' '-de-us from the Upper Cambrian. Now, the mean- 

 ing of this is, according to some, that our King Crab is de- 

 scended from the same primeval stock as these trilobites; and 

 that all the trilobites were descended from that stock. This, 

 in fact, means evolution, and, we might as well say it at 

 once, that it means all the Crustacea have descended from 

 the same primitive stock. It is supposed that primitive crus- 

 tacean lived before Cambrian time. On this subject I do not 

 wish to say any more at present; but before we finish these 



