Here
the supposition at once presents itself that the primitive tubicolar
worm was a Protula,--that some of its descendants, which had already
become developed into perfect Protulae, subsequently improved themselves
by the formation of an operculum which might protect their tubes from
inimical intruders,--and that subsequent descendants of these latter
finally lost the lateral filaments of the opercular peduncle, which
they, like their ancestors, had developed.
What say the schools to this case? Whence and for what purpose, if the
Serpulae were produced or created as ready-formed species, these lateral
filaments of the opercular peduncle? To allow them to sprout forth
merely for the sake of an invariable plan of structure, even when they
must be immediately retracted again as superfluous, would certainly be
an evidence rather of childish trifling or dictatorial pedantry, than of
infinite wisdom. But no, I am mistaken; from the beginning of all things
the Creator knew, that one day the inquisitive children of men would
grope about after analogies and homologies, and that Christian
naturalists would busy themselves with thinking out his Creative ideas;
at any rate, in order to facilitate the discernment by the former that
the opercular peduncle of the Serpulae is homologous with a branchial
filament, He allowed it to make a detour in its development, and pass
through the form of a barbate branchial filament.
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