THE BIOGENETIC LAW 



171 



the phyletic stage represented by the Schizopods appears as an 

 ontogenetic stage, just before the final nietamorpliosis of the larva 

 to the perfect animal. This is the case in most of the marine 

 Decapods, in those forms which do not go through tlie whole course 

 of their development within the egg, but emerge as Zocva larsie, 

 or even, as in Fenem potimirim, as nauplii. In the last-named 

 species (Fig. 109) the ontogeny contains at least three stages which 

 must have lived, perhaps not as mature forms, but as primitive larval 

 forms, for unthinkable ages— the stage of the nauplus (Fig. 109 A), 

 that of the Zosea (Fig. 109 B and 6'), and that (^f the Schizopcxi 

 (Fig. 109, D); from this last the fully 

 developed Decapod Crustacean arises 

 (Fig. 109, E). 



We are, therefore, justified in 

 saying that here the racial evolution 

 is recapitulated in the individual de- 

 velopment, although condensed and 

 shortened in proportion as more numer- 

 ous stages of the phyletic development 

 are gone through within the egg, for 

 there the different stages can succeed 

 each other more rapidly and directly 

 than in a metamorphosis of the free- 

 swimming larvae, since these must 

 procure their own material for their 

 further growth and their metamor- 

 phosis, while the yolk of the egg- 

 supplies a store of material which is 



sufficient for the production of a whole g; '^^^.^^^ *^" '^'•^^'"''- ^"' ^>'^ 

 series of successive stao^es. 



For this reason it inevitably resulted that the sharply defined 

 characters of the phyletic stages Avere more and more lost as 

 soon as they were transferred from larval stages to stages in 

 embryogenesis. For, in the first place, these shar[)ly defined charac- 

 ters, such as the spines of the Zo^ea larv^a, or the swinniiing l)ristles of 

 the ' oars,' or the shape of thorax or abdomen characteristic of certain 

 species, are adapted to a free life, and would be valueless in an 

 embryonic stage ; and secondl}^ in the transference of the free larval 

 stages to embryonic development the greatest possible condensation 

 and abbreviation of the stages must have been striven for, which 

 could only come about by a continual nuitual adaptation of the 

 embryonic parts to one another, involving the suppression of every- 



Fia. 114. Zonea-larva of a Crab, 

 after R. Hertwig. J-F, tlie already 

 functional anterior appendages — 

 antennae, mandibles, and swimming- 

 legs, VI-XIII, ludiments of the 

 posterior appendages of the eephalo- 

 thorax {Cph\ Abd, the abdomen. 



