), etc., to be a true
Amphithoe* possesses it (* I accept this and all the other genera of
Amphipoda here mentioned, with the limits given to them by Spence Bate
('Catalogue of Amphipodous Crustacea').)--that in many species of
Cerapus it is reduced to a scarcely perceptible rudiment--nay, that it
is sometimes present in youth and disappears (although perhaps not
without leaving some trace) at maturity, as was found by Spence Bate to
be the case in Acanthonotus Owenii and Atylus carinatus, and I can
affirm with regard to an Atylus of these seas, remarkable for its
plumose branchiae--and that from all this, at the present day when the
increasing number of known Amphipoda and the splitting of them into
numerous genera thereby induced, compels us to descend to very minute
distinctive characters, we must nevertheless hesitate before employing
the secondary flagellum as a generic character. The case of Melita
Fresnelii therefore cannot excite any doubts as to Darwin's theory.
CHAPTER 3. MORPHOLOGY OF CRUSTACEA--NAUPLIUS-LARVAE.
If the absence of contradictions among the inferences deduced from them
for a narrow and consequently easily surveyed department must prepossess
us in favour of Darwin's views, it must be welcomed as a positive
triumph of his theory if far-reaching conclusions founded upon it should
SUBSEQUENTLY be confirmed by facts, the existence of which science, in
its previous state, by no means allowed us to suspect.
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