ak 
1881. ] Zoology. gor | 
rior races of men, and in the infants of the higher races, marks 
an inferior stage of evolution. 
“It is the same with the equality of the sexes, which is only 
Seen in little developed individuals, as inferior races and species, 
young persons, the aged, and in inferior classes of society. 
“On the contrary, the preéminence of the male over the female 
represents a superior phase of evolution, since it characterizes 
Superior species and races, adult age and the superior classes of 
Society. 
“From the moral as from the piysical side, evolution appears 
to have progressed from a state of superiority of the female to 
that of the male sex; and the stage of equality represents an 
intermediate stage.” 
ON THE MorPuotocy oF THE CORBULA OF CERTAIN PLUMULAR- 
IDE —The specialized portion of the stem of the Plumularide 
which bears the sexual organs and which, from its likeness to a 
hasket, is known as the corbula, has been compared by the great- 
€st authority on the hydroids, Professor Allman, to a metamor- 
Phosed pinna, while the ribs of the same have been likened to 
the changed mesial nematophores of the pinna. Although this 
comparison has much to recommend it in Ag/aophenia spinosa 
ll, and some others, it is certainly not the homology of the 
corbula in all genera, as I have shown in my report on the deep 
sea hydroids of the Blake (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., Vol. vits, No. 
7). The true morphology of the corbula in these new genera, 
and the facts which support it, may be stated briefly as follows : 
In the new genus Pleurocarpa, collected off St. Vincent by 
Mr, Agassiz, we have a true corbula homologous with a hydroid 
branch, and not with a modified pinna. In it the so-called cor- 
bula ribs are modified pinnz and not comparable with metamor- 
-phosed nematophores. Showing that such is the case, we find in 
this genus that the proximal end of a branch which bears the 
Corbula assumes the normal form of a corbula, while the distal 
extremity retains the true character of a branch with pinnz un- 
changed. ” This venus seems to me to indicate, without doubt, 
that the corbula is a modified branch, bearing as ribs metamor- 
Phosed pinnz instead of being, as taught by Allman, the homo- 
gue of a pinna with developed nematophores forming corbula _ 
T1Ds, 
._ When now we come to study another genus of Plumularide, 
in which the protection of the sexual organs also assumes the 
orm of a corbulz, we find verifications of the same morphology 
which has been shown to be true in Pleurocarpa. The distal ends 
Of the branches in Hippurella are true corbula, while the prox- 
mal portions are normal branches and bear prime regularly 
| boatsed, imparting to the whole an unquestionable likeness to a 
Fanch. Indeed, no one can for a moment question that here ae 
