20 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Darwin and his followers would assert that none of these 

 animals were created for budding, but that the habit had been 

 slowly acquired and perpetuated, from the advantages it gave its 

 possessors over other forms which only increased by eggs in the 

 ordinary manner, and thus perhaps leading to the supplanting 

 of the latter by the former. The varieties which budded most 

 freely, moreover, would have the best chance to survive. 



On the other hand, budding gives no vantage-ground for 

 sexual selection. Even in those cases in which the buds are of 

 separate sexes, as in Myrianida, sexual selection would appear 

 to be of comparatively little moment in regard to the issue of 

 the respective elements in the free condition, except in so far as 

 the strongest swimmers of both sexes might pass to the greatest 

 distances from their parent-stock, and thus give rise to a hardier 

 race. This end, however, might have been attained without the 

 production of separate buds, as in those Syllides in which the 

 posterior region discharges, for instance, its eggs without being 

 separated from the anterior. The same occurs in the Hetero- 

 nereis condition of the Nereids, and in Dodecaceria. It may be 

 supposed, however, that the free buds, unimpeded by the anterior 

 region, and with their specially organized swimming-bristles 

 and processes, would be better fitted for dispersing themselves 

 through the water, and intermingling with those from diverse 

 stocks, just as the wind or an insect does in the case of many 

 flowers and shrubs. 



Again, many of the Syllides are sedentary, and the buds may 

 be supposed to be a special means of dispersion, yet Myrianida, 

 with its long chain of buds, is at least sometimes pelagic, and 

 the buds of Cephalodiscus would not appear to subserve this end, 

 which probably is the function of the larvse from the large eggs 

 of this species. 



Nature appears in some cases to expend her energies in 

 budding, and the ordinary sexual elements are not developed ; 

 yet in the animal of the coral-like Filigrana the latter exist in 

 the parent-stock in front of the bud. Further, budding is a 

 simple method of increase, since only a single form is necessary 

 for this function, and the bud is not only fed and protected by 

 the adult, but— in the case of those which subsequently lead 



