130 ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
opinion; right or wrong, future results must settle. We have 
seen that the young Pycnogon, at the most mature stage at 
which I have observed it attached to the female, possesses a 
rostrum, a well-developed pair of foot-jaws (being in fact the 
most perfectly organized portion of the animal at this stage), 
and four rudimentary legs, terminated by very long filaments, 
which attach the young animal in an indirect way to the female. 
From the appearance of the outer membrane investing the little 
animal, and the rudimentary character of the legs, I expect a 
moult would shortly take place, and the animal would then en- 
tirely free itself from the investing skin, and legs, with their 
attached filaments, being then of a globular form, with a pair of 
foot-jaws, and a short rostrum. At this stage of the development 
the little animals become free, and here we lose all trace of them 
as connected with the adult Pyenogon; we should naturally expect 
that there was little chance of ever again falling in with them 
in their young state, in consequence of their minute size at this 
period (4, to 44, inch across); and doubtless many observers 
have lost them at this stage. I imagine they are carried by the 
wayes into pools, similar to that before alluded to, and contain- 
ing a quantity of Coryne. The young animal would naturally 
cling to any fixed support, and, it may be, progress in some 
peculiar manner, and thus reach the polypes, or else the tenta- 
cles reach it, and shortly afterwards it is conveyed to the oral 
orifice of the Zoophyte, and being engulphed, is again lost to us, 
as, once in the Coryne, it becomes the food of that animal, which, 
we cannot doubt, possesses some means of digesting, and 
assimilating, such particles of matter, vegetable or animal, as 
may serve as nutriment. The young Pycnogon, having been 
received into the ccenosare of the Zoophyte, would naturally 
undergo the process of digestion and consequent dissolution; 
but, in this particular case, we find the ordinary rule does not 
hold; for the young Pyenogon is found whole, and undergoing 
development, within the polypary: if it has passed in by the 
oral orifice, it has by some peculiar means escaped the common 
fate of most small animals that the polype gets hold of; and if 
it did not pass in by this aperture, how did it get in? I can see 
