In the Rotatoria, as shown by Huxley in Lacinularia,* 
and by Williamson in Melicerta,t the yolk is at first a 
single globular mass, the first changes which take place 
in it being as follows :—“ The central nucleus becomes 
drawn out and subdivides into two, this division being 
followed by a corresponding segmentation of the yolk. 
The same process is repeated again and again, until at 
length the entire yolk is converted into a mass of minute 
cells.” Among the Crustacea the total segmentation of the 
yolk occcurs among the Copepoda, the Rhizocephala, and 
Cirripedia. Sars has described the same process in one of 
the nudibranchiate mollusca { (Tritonia), Muller in Ento- 
chocha,§ Haeckel in Ascidia, || Lacaze Duthiers in Denta- 
lium.§] Figures 18 to 21, Pl. 6, are taken from Koren and 
Danielssen’s ** memoir on the development of Purpura 
lapillus. hs 
Figs. 22-24 show the same stages in a fish (Amphioxus) 
as given by Haeckel, and it is unnecessaty to point out 
the great similarity. 
Lastly, figures 25 to 29, Pl. 6, are given by Dr. Allen 
Thomson,?t as illustrating the first stages in the develop- 
ment of the vertebrata. 
I might have given many other examples, but the above 
are probably sufficient, and show that the processes which 
constitute the life-history of the lowest organised beings, 
very closely resemble the first stages in the development 
of more advanced groups; that, as Allen Thomson has 
truly observed,tt “the occurrence of segmentation and 
the regularity of its phenomena are so constant that we 
may regard it as one of the best established series of facts 
in organic nature.” 
It is true that yolk segmentation is not universal in the 
animal kingdom ; that there are great groups in which 
the yolk does not divide in this manner,—perhaps owing to 
some difference in its relation to the germinal vesicle, or 
perhaps because it has become one of these suppressed 
Stages in embryological development, many instances of 
which might be given, not only in zoology, but, as I may 
state on the authority of Dr. Hooker, in botany also. 
’ But however this may be, it is surely not uninteresting, 
nor without significance, to find that changes which con- 
stitute the life-history of the lowest creatures, form the 
initial stages even of the highest. 
Returning to the immediate subject of this work, I 
have pointed out that many beetles and other insects 
are derived from larvze closely resembling Campodea, 
that other insects come from larvz more or less like 
Lindia, and it has been shown over and over again that 
in many circumstances the embryo of the more specia'ised 
forms resembles the full-grown representatives of lower 
types. I conclude, therefore, that the Insecta generally 
are descended from ancestors resembling the existing 
genus Campodea, and that these again have arisen from 
others belonging to a type represented more or less closely 
by the existing genus Lindia. 
Of course it may be argued that these facts have not 
really the significance which they seem to me to possess. 
It may be said that when Divine power created insects, 
they were created with these remarkable developmental 
processes. [By such arguments the conclusions of geolo- 
gists were long disputed. When God made the rocks, 
it was tersely said, he made the fossils in them. No one, 
I suppose, would now be found to maintain such a theory, 
and I believe the time will come when it will be generally 
admitted that the structure of the egg, and its develop- 
mental changes, teach us as truly the course of organic 
* Trans. of the Microsc. Soc. of London, 185r. 
+ ot Journal of Microsc. Science, 1853. 
tT Wiegmann's Archiv., 1840, p. 196. 
§Ueber die Erzeugung von Schnecken in Holothurier. 
x8s5r. Ann. Nat. Hist, 1852, v. ix. Muller's Archiv., 1852. 
| Ann. des Sci Nat. 1853, p.89 
J Ann. des Sci. Nat, 1857, pl. vi. 
** Naturliche, Schipfungsgeschichte, pl. x. 
++ Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology. Art. Ovum, p. 4 
1t Thomson, l.c. Article, Ovum p. 139. 
Berlin, Bericht, 
NATURE 
at 
269 
development in ancient times, as the contents of rocks 
teach us the past history of the earth itself. 
Joun Lurrock 
NOTES 
Sik CHARLES WHEATSTONE has been elected a Foreiga 
Associate of the French Academy of Sciences in place of the 
late Baron Liebig. 
Mr. Cotr’s retirement from public service is now completed, 
and the Treasury have awarded him the full pension usually 
granted to officers who have completed fifty years of public 
service. Although Mr. Cole quits the South Kensington 
Museum, he will continue to assist in promoting the diffusion 
of Science and Art applied to productive industry as the Acting 
Commissioner for the estate purchased out of the surplus funds 
of the Exhibition of 1851. This estate at present comprehends the 
Horticultural Gardens, the buildings of the Annual International. 
Exhibitions, and the Royal Albert Hall. Measures are in 
progress for forthwith commencing the National Training School 
for Music. A meeting of those interested in the Testimonial which 
it is proposed to present to Mr. Cole, will be held in Willis’s Rooms 
‘to-morrow at 3 0’clock. Those who know best how much Mr. 
Cole has done for the encouragement and advance of Science, 
will, we are sure, be the most ready to take part in this well- 
deserved testimony to the value of his services to the public. 
AFTER the alarming rumours that have recently found their 
way into the newspapers, it is a great relief to receive what 
appears to be really authentic news of the safety of Sir Samuel 
and Lady Baker. It appears, from the message received by the 
Daily Telegraph, that they arrived at Khartoum on the 29th of 
June. It is stated that the party had been as far south as a 
place called Mosindi, near the chief village of Kamrasi, the 
King of Unyoro, which would be in about 1°45’ N. Jat., and 
about 80 miles to the east of the shores of the Albert Nyanza. 
Here Sir Samuel is said to have been attacked by a chief named 
Kabriki, and, on his retreat, by a party of slave-hunters. He 
seems to have established another Egyptian station at a place 
called Fatiko, somewhere to the south of Gondokoro. The 
story about the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika being one, 
which forms part of the news published by the Daily Telegraph, 
is certainly very startling news, and must at present be received 
with great caution, though the 7é/egraph correspondent declares 
he received it direct from the lips of the Emancipator of Central 
Africa himself, 
Mr. AUBERON HERBERT’S Select Committee on the Wild 
Birds Protection Act has met three times, and examined a good 
many witnesses. It would not be fair to take the report, 
published in the Fie/d, of what passed at those meetings as 
strictly correct, but if it be at all true, the doubt, before ex- 
pressed in these pages (NATURE, May 1, 1873), as to any real 
good resulting from the inquiry, can hardly be otherwise than 
justified. The questions put by the chairman indicate, as far as 
we perceive, that he has a very hazy idea of the bearings of the 
whole subject, and no one of the other members appears to have 
sufficient knowledge of any part of it to follow home by cross- 
examination any of the evidence offered in reply. By many of 
the witnesses birds are regarded as divisible into two groups— 
the useful and the noxious—a simple classification which will be 
amusing to naturalists. Such witnesses also think that the 
destruction of the latter should be encouraged and the former 
protected—being quite innocent of the fact that no laws in the 
world will make most ‘‘ useful ” birds more numerous than they 
already are. It seems to us that the only way in which an 
inquiry of this kind could be satisfactorily conducted would be 
by a Royal Commission, in which the scientific element, so 
