12 METAMORPHOSES OF MAN 



occur in the creature after emergence from the egg are 

 very trivial, and relate chiefly to a few variations as to 

 size and proportion. Such is the state of things 

 among all vivipara, * and among a considerable 

 number of ovipara also. Nature seems in these to 

 have pursued a straight course. Every change im- 

 pressed upon the germ has brought the new being 

 nearer its final plan. 



On the contrary, in all other oviparous species, the 

 creature which springs from the egg differs in nearly 

 every respect from its parents. It has neither their 

 form nor their mode of life. Frequently it inhabits a 

 different medium. We find in it complete apparatus 

 undiscoverable in its parents ; on the other hand, these 

 latter possess other organs which are absent in their 

 offspring. In returning to the original type, the de- 

 scendant must undergo important changes. Here 

 Nature seems pleased to prolong the route, and to 

 arrive at the end of her journey only after many turn- 

 ings ; but, at all events, this route is a definite one, 

 clearly marked out, and without a single cross-way. 



In the two preceding cases, each germ gave rise to 

 but a single individual, thus preserving its unity whole 

 from birth to death. The three lower sub-kingdoms 

 — Annulosa, Mollusca, and Coelenterata — supply us 

 with far stranger facts, whose real meaning is one of 

 the latest discoveries of science. In certain species, 

 always oviparous, each egg produces a creature bear- 



* The marsupials (Kangaroo, &c.) may be enumerated as excep- 

 tions ; but these vivipara, although having a double gestation, being 

 hatched in the uterus of the mother, and carried for a while in the 

 marsupial pouch, present in the main the same phenomena as 

 ordinary mammals. 



