Masiax M. ringens, etc'. Lord S. G. Osborne and F. A, BedivelL 185 
or degreadation of some forms is, as a rule, followed sooner or later 
by the appearance of new and higher ones, directly accounts for it, 
and it may be, by directly connecting together the degradation of 
the old and the appearance of the new. We want a principle that 
would lift us out of the utter confusion of mind which we are 
in, when we find that a vast concourse of forms, which we are told 
reached their present conditions by a process of alteration so 
gradual as to be almost or absolutely imperceptible — by a con- 
tinuity of progress requiring a gigantic amount of time for its 
execution — is yet more especially remarkable for a succession of 
violent, irreconcilable gaps, occurring too at the very places where 
we want and are led to expect links. We need a principle in 
direct relation to the extraordinary gradations upwards and end- 
less varieties of results now seen in the procreative act. — The 
question is not, can evolution make the mastax of M. ringens ? 
but, has it done so ? A great geological professor derived tea-pot 
from tepeo, to be warm, but he still left a better derivation 
possible.* 
* Since writing the above I have had M. pUiila sent me (see ‘ Science-Gossip,’ 
Jan. 1872, and ‘ M. M. J.,’ vol. viii. p. 6), and its habits bear on the views 
expressed in the text. It is well known that whenever M. ringens ejects feeces it 
bends back the disk dorsally over the amis, as if stooping over the edge of its 
tube, the anus then protrudes upwards and shoots the refuse up in a cloud 
of small particles. To anyone acquainted with the animal the object of this 
attitude is obvious — it is taken to ensure the free passage away of the faecal 
matter, and to prevent it running all round the lobes a second time — the result 
being that as a fact it goes to the ventral side of the main ciliary wreath, and as 
it were over the shoulder of the animal and then into the central stream of waste 
over the chin, and then away. Now M. pilula adopts precisely the same course, 
but with a different result ; for whereas M. ringens wants to be rid of its feeces, 
M. pilula wants to keep them — the first consolidates the matter within the 
lowest part of the alimentary canal into an oval brick, and then ejects it into the 
stream of waste precisely as does M. ringens ; but instead of its passing over the 
chin, it is there stopped and caught (the chins of the two animals being very 
similar), and then laid in the attitude given by Mr. Cubitt (‘ M. M. J.,’ vol. viii. 
p. 5). If the reader will compare this method of brick-making and brick-laying 
with that pursued by M. ringens (sec ‘ M. M. J.,’ vol. xviii. p. 214), I think he 
will find some interesting conclusions involved in the comparison. 
VUL. I. 
r 
