In the first place, and before inquiring into its significance, I will say a word upon this fact itself. It was natural to consider whether two different species with very similar females and very different males might not perhaps live together, or whether the males, instead of occurring in two sharply defined forms, might not be only variable within very wide limits. I can admit neither of these suppositions. Our _Tanais_ lives among densely interwoven Confervæ, which form a coat of about an inch in thickness upon stones in the neighbourhood of the shore. If a handful of this green felt is put into a large glass with clear sea-water, the walls of the glass are soon seen covered with hundreds, nay with thousands, of these little, plump, whitish Isopods. In this way I have examined thousands of them with the simple lens, and I have also examined many hundreds with the microscope, without finding any differences among the females, or any intermediate forms between the two kinds of males. To the old school this occurrence of two kinds of males will appear to be merely a matter of curiosity. To those who regard the “plan of creation” as the “free conception of an Almighty intellect, matured in the thoughts of the latter before it is manifested in palpable, external forms,” it will appear to be a mere _caprice_ of the Creator, as it is inexplicable either from the point of view of practical adaptation, or from the “typical plan of structure.” From the side of Darwin’s theory, on the contrary, this fact acquires meaning and significance, and it appears in return to be fitted to throw light upon a question in which Bronn saw “the first and most material objection against the new theory,” namely, how it is possible that from the accumulation in various directions of the smallest variations running out of one another, varieties and species are produced, which stand out from the primary form clearly and sharply like the petiolated leaf of a Dicotyledon, and are not amalgamated with the primary form and with each other like the irregular curled lobes of a foliaceous Lichen.