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REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 761 
dence. In a word, we doubt whether the candid, cautious zoolog- 
ical expert, though a believer in evolution, would accept many of 
the apparent conclusions of this taking book. For instance, the 
homologies of the sponges with the polypes are accepted to their 
fullest extent by the author, so of the holothurians with the worms, 
and more especially the supposed passage of the ascidians into , 
the vertebrates. A few explanatory words bridge over the inter- 
vals between these grand divisions of animals as if the matter had 
passed discussion. 
In all candor we should say after a second reading of the chap- 
ter on Echinodermata, that it is a fair specimen of zoology run 
mad; but for that matter, though agreeing with the general evolu- 
tional views of the author, the errors to which we refer are to be 
found in the parent of the present work, Heckel’s brilliant and 
. remarkable but faulty “ History of Creation,” a true child by intel- 
lectual descent of Oken’s “ Physiophilosophy.” 
We proceed to some special criticisms. Is the animal figured so 
rudely (many of the figures are exceedingly poor) and described 
on p. 37 really a Sipunculus? Both the figure and description re- 
mind us rather of Synapta. The author on p. 40 adopts Hæckel’s 
Strange and misleading view as to the organization of the star- 
fish, in the following language. ‘The arm of a starfish is, in 
fact, a worm ; not simply resembling one but structurally the same, 
the segmentation, the water vascular system, the nervous cord 
in each arm of the starfish being exactly the same as that of an 
articulated worm [!!]. The starfish has probably been produced 
through the union of five worms, the worms having united at their 
posterior ends, since the eyes are seen at the free ends of the 
Starfish [ ! !!].” This we also find in Heckel’s “t History of Crea- 
tion,” though Haeckel figures the embryo of the starfish. Thanks, 
however, to the labors of Johannes Müller, Professor and Mr. _ 
A. Agassiz, and Wyville Thompson, we have such accurate in- 
formation as falsifies this singular conception. Farther on, Dr. 
Chapman concludes, and this is a specimen of his over-confident, 
uncritical mode of dealing with these subjects, that ‘“‘ The origin 
of the Asteride, or starfishes, from the worms is in perfect har- 
mony with the structure, development and petrified remains of the 
group. The most striking facts of their economy are aepisinsbio 
on such a theory, but are perfectly meaningless on any other.” . 
No one whose conception was not founded on mere second-hand, 
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