278 
thoroughly than has hitherto been done. We cannot con- 
clude our remarks on the Cephalopoda better than by a 
quotation from Professor Huxley's valuable work " On the 
Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals," in which he discusses 
the value of generalisations based on morphological facts, 
and of certain attempts at the construction of animal genea- 
logies : — " It is important to remark that these morphological 
generalisations, so far as they are correctly made, are simple 
statements of fact, and have nothing to do with any specula- 
tions respecting the manner in which the invertebrated 
animals with which we are acquainted have come into 
existence. They will remain true, so far as they are true at 
all, even if it should be proved that every animal species has 
come into existence by itself, and without reference to any 
other. On the other hand, if there are independent grounds 
for a belief in evolution, the facts of morphology not only 
present no difficulty in the way of the hypothesis of the 
evolution of the Inverfchrata from a common origin, but 
readily adapt themselves to it. 
" Hence the numerous phylogenic hypotheses which have 
of late come into existence, and of which it may be said that 
all are valuable, so far as they suggest new lines of investi- 
gation, and that few have any other significance — in the 
absence of any adequate palseontological history of the 
Invertehrata, 'any attempt to construct their phylogeny must 
be mere speculation. But the oldest portion of the Geo- 
logical record does not furnish a single example of a fossil, 
which we have any reasonable grounds for supposing to be 
the representative of the earliest form of any one of the series 
of invertebrated animals; nor any means of checking our 
imaginations of Vhat may have been, by evidence of what 
has been, the early history of invertebrate life on the globe. 
" Already, indications are not wanting that the vast mul- 
titude of fossil Arthropods, Molluscs, Echinoderms, and 
