Suppose again that _all_ the existing Ascidians, as many of them actually have, had long ago lost their recapitulative history in growth from the egg: suppose that no such a thing as an Ascidian tadpole existed, but that the Ascidian’s egg grew as directly as possible into an Ascidian, in every living species of the group. This might easily be the case. Then most assuredly we should not have the least notion that the Ascidians were degenerate Vertebrates. We should still class them where they used to be classed before the Russian naturalist Kowalewsky discovered the true history and structure of the Ascidian tadpole. I believe that I shall have the assent of every naturalist when I say that the vertebrate character of the Ascidians and the history of their degeneration would never have been suspected, or even dreamed of, had the Ascidian tadpoles ceased to appear in the course of the Ascidian development at a geological period anterior to the present epoch. This being the case, it must be admitted that it is quite _possible_—I do not say more than possible—that other groups of animals besides parasites, Barnacles, and Ascidians, are degenerate. It is quite possible that animals with considerable complexity of structure, at least as complex as the Ascidians, may have been produced by degeneration from still more highly-organized ancestors. Any group of animals to which we can turn may possibly be the result of degeneration, and yet offer no evidence of that degeneration in its growth from the egg.