ONTOGENY. 



fossils, other records of the history of the origin of organ- 

 isms, which in many cases are of no less value, nay, in 

 several cases are of much greater value, than fossils. By 

 far the most important of these other records of creation is, 

 without doubt, ontogeny, that is, the history of the develop- 

 ment of the organic individual (embryology and metamor- 

 phology). It briefly repeats in great and marked features 

 the series of forms which the ancestors of the respective 

 individuals have passed through from the beginning of their 

 tribe. We have designated the paleeontological history of 

 the development of the ancestors of a living form as the 

 history of a tribe, or phylogeny, and we may therefore thus 

 enunciate this exceedingly important biogenetic fundamental 

 'principle: "Ontogeny is a short and quick repetition, or 

 recapitulation, of Phylogeny, determined by the laws of In- 

 heritance and Adaptation." As every animal and every 

 plant from the beginning of its individual existence passes 

 throue-h a series of different forms, it indicates in rapid 



a 



succession and in general outlines the long and slowly 

 changing series of states of form which its progenitors have 

 passed through from the most ancient times. (Gert Morph. 

 ii. 6, 110, 300.) 



It is true that the sketch which the ontogeny of or- 

 ganisms gives us of their phylogeny is in most cases more 

 or Ifess obscured, and all the more so the more Adaptation, 

 in the course of time, has predominated over Inheritance, 

 and the more powerfully the law of abbreviated inheritance, 

 and the law of correlative adaptation, have exerted their 

 influence. However, this does not lessen the great value 

 which the actual and faithfully preserved features of that 

 sketch possess. Ontogeny is of the most inestimable value 



VOL. II. D 



