I A CHAPTER IN DARWINISM 57 



able that super-larvation has taken place at various 

 epochs and in various groups of the animal kingdom, 

 just as it does in the axolotl, and yet we cannot hope 

 for evidence fitted to establish its occurrence in any 

 one case, where it is no longer possible by exceptional 

 conditions to recover (as in the case of the axolotl, 

 which can experimentally be made to advance to the 

 Salamander phase by proper treatment), the discarded, 

 more developed adult form. By super-larvation it 

 would be possible for an embryonic form developed in 

 relation to special embryonic conditions and not re- 

 capitulative of an ancestry, to become the adult form 

 of the race, and thus to give to the subsequent evolu- 

 tion of that race a totally different and otherwise 

 improbable direction. 



It seems also exceedingly probable that super-larva- 

 tion does not occur only as in the axolotl through 

 premature maturation of the reproductive organs, but 

 the phenomenon may develop itself more slowly by a 

 gradual creeping forward, as it were, of larval features. 

 Just as the adaptations acquired in, and having rela- 

 tion to, later life tend to show themselves in an early 

 period of the development of the individual and out 

 of due season ; so do characters acquired by the early 

 embryo, and having relation only to this early period 

 of life tend to remain as permanent structures, and 

 by their invasion to perturb the adult organisation. 

 Such perturbation may tend either to simplification 

 or elaboration. 



