THE RECAPITULATION THEORY 311 



Thp_papitalist on the other hand, is enabled like 

 f to omit these earlier stages, and after a 



brief period of incubation, to start business with 

 large factories equipped with the most recent appli- 

 ances, and__wjth a complete staff of workpeople 

 existence fully fledged. 



There is no doubt that abundance of food yolk 

 is a direct and very frequent cause of the omission 

 of ancestral stages from individual development ; 

 but it must not be viewed as the sole cause. It is 

 quite impossible that any animal, except perhaps 

 in the lowest "zoological groups, should repeat all 

 the ancestral stages in the history of the race ; the 

 limits of time avail aIe for individual development 

 will not permit .Jhis^ There is a tendency in all 

 animals towards condensation of the ancestral his- 

 tory, towards striking a direct path from the egg 

 to the adult. This Telio!ency is best marked in the 

 higher, the more complicated members of a group 

 i.e., in those which have a longer and more tor- 

 tuous pedigree and, though greatly strengthened 

 by the presence of food yolk in the egg, is appa- 

 rently not due to this in the first instance. 



Thus the simpler forms of Orbitolites, as O. 

 tenm'sstma, repeat in their development all the 

 stages leading from a spiral to a cyclical shell ; but 

 in the more complicated species, as Dr. Carpenter 

 has pointed out, there is a tendency towards pre- 

 cocious development of the adult characters, the 

 earlier stages being hurried over in a modified 

 form ; while in the most complex examples, as in 

 O. complanata, the earlier spiral stages may be 



