The Recapitulation Theory in Biology 51 



"Although the adherents of the Recapitulation Theory will 

 doubtless accept the above as, in the main, a correct statement 

 of the method of development, yet not the most sanguine of 

 them will hope to find so perfect an epitome of phylogeny in 

 the majority of cases." It is "truly remarkable that we should 

 get as much recapitulation as we do." 85 



Hurst rested his argument mainly upon von Baer's law and 

 the cases cited in its favor by Darwin, with a few of his own. In 

 his reply Bather refers to cases which point very strongly to 

 an actual retention of adult characters in ontogeny, and ques- 

 tions Hurst's use of von Baer's law. This law was meant to 

 refer to existing groups. 



" . . .there is all the difference in the world between filial and 

 fraternal relationship, and although von Baer's law is undoubt- 

 edly true of the latter, there are many objections to supposing 

 that it is equally true of the former." 



(2) In the section on acceleration and retardation it was shown 

 that many palaeontologists strongly uphold the theory of reca- 

 pitulation and present many illustrative cases especially among 

 invertebrate fossils. That recapitulation in practically the form 

 given it by Haeckel still has advocates appears from the fol- 

 lowing extract of a recent text-book. 



"In short, the embryological investigation of both animal and 

 vegetable organisms leaves no doubt as to the general truth of 

 the recapitulation hypothesis, and must convince any unbiased 

 observer that, however much modified it may be by abbreviation 

 and by the superposition of secondary features, the life-history 

 of the individual is essentially a condensed epitome of the ances- 

 tral history of the race. The law of recapitulation, indeed, may 

 be regarded simply as a logical extension of the law of heredity, 

 for every organism tends to inherit the characters not only of 

 its immediate progenitors but of all its ancestors, and these 

 characters appear in the individual life-history in the same order 

 as that in which they first appeared in the ancestral history — 

 in other words, ontogeny is a repetition of phylogeny and can 

 only be explained in terms of organic evolution." 86 



Perhaps the following quotation from a recent text-book of 

 embryology is more representative of the views of those who 

 still accept recapitulation. It will be noticed that the histor- 



« Natural Science, Vol. II, p. 278. 



»• Dendy, Outlines of Evolutionary Biology, 1912, p. 281. 



