ANIMAL PEDIGREES 213 



hours' time, during the development of the individual 

 animal, may perhaps afford us a hint that such 

 enormous periods are not really necessary in 

 historical development, and that transformation of 

 one form to a widely different one may, under 

 favourable circumstances, be effected with con- 

 siderable rapidity. 



The Echinoids, and other groups of Echinoderms 

 as well, have been worked at from the same stand- 

 point and with the same results by Neumayr, in 

 whom we have recently lost one of the most gifted 

 and painstaking of palaeontologists. 



As an example of the extreme value in certain 

 cases of a single fossil specimen, the singular fossil 

 bird Archaeopteryx may be referred to. In recent 

 birds the metacarpal bones of the wing are firmly 

 fused with one another and with the distal row of 

 carpal or wrist bones, but in development the 

 metacarpals are at first and for some time distinct. 

 The first specimen of Archaeopteryx discovered, 

 which is now in the British Museum, showed that 

 in it this distinctness was preserved in the adult 

 i.e., that what is now an embryonic character in 

 recent birds was formerly an adult one. 



Another very excellent illustration of the paral- 

 lelism between the palaeontological and the develop- 

 mental series is afforded by the antlers of deer, 

 which as is well known are shed annually, and 

 grow again of increased size and complexity in each 

 succeeding year. In the case of the red deer, 

 Cervus elaphus, the antlers are shed in the spring, 

 usually between the months of February and April ; 



