The History of Creation, Vol. 2 (of 2): Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural CausesHaeckel, Ernst
Science
The History of Creation, Vol. 2 (of 2): Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes
Haeckel, Ernst
Evolution; Heredity; Human beings -- Origin
Fig. _E c_ represents a parasitic sack-crab (Sacculina purpurea) from
the order of Root-crabs (Rhizocephala). These parasites, by adaptation
to a parasitical life, have developed out of Barnacle crabs (Fig. _D
c_), much in the same way as the fish-lice (_C c_), out of the freely
swimming Oar-legged crabs (_B c_). However, the suppression, and the
subsequent degeneration, of all of the organs, has gone much further in
the present case than in most of the fish-lice. Out of the articulated
crab, possessing legs, intestine, and eye, and which in an early stage
as nauplius (_E n_, Plate VIII.), swam about freely, there has developed
a formless, unsegmented sack, a red sausage, which now only contains
sexual organs (eggs and sperm) and an intestinal rudiment. The legs and
the eye have completely disappeared. At the posterior end is the opening
of the genitals. From the mouth grows a thick bunch of numerous
tree-shaped and branching root-like fibres. These spread themselves out
(like the roots of a plant in the ground) in the soft hinder part of the
body of the hermit-crab (Pagurus), upon which the root-crab lives as a
parasite, and from which it draws its nourishment. Our drawing (_E c_),
a copy of Fritz Müller’s, is slightly enlarged, and shows the whole of
the sausage-shaped sack-crab, with all its root-fibres, when drawn out
of the body upon which it lives.
Fig. _F c_ is a _shrimp_ (Peneus Mülleri), from the order of _ten-foot_
crabs (Decapoda), to which our river cray-fish, and its nearest
relative, the lobster, and the short-tailed shore-crabs also belong.
This order contains the largest and, gastronomically, the most important
crabs, and belongs, together with the mouth-legged and split-legged
crabs, to the legion of the stalk-eyed mailed crabs (Podophthalma). The
shrimp, as well as the river crab, has in front, on each side below the
eye, two long feelers (the first much shorter than the second), then
three jaws, and three jaw-feet, then five very long legs (the three
fore ones of which, in the Peneus, are furnished with nippers, and the
third of which is the longest). Finally, on the first five joints of the
hinder part of the body there are other five pairs of feet. This shrimp,
which is one of the most highly developed and perfect crabs, originates
(according to Fritz Müller’s important discovery) out of a nauplius (_F
n_ Plate VIII.), and consequently proves that the higher Crustacea have
developed out of the same form as the lower ones, namely, the nauplius.
(Compare vol. ii. p. 175.)
PLATES XII. AND XIII. (_Between pages 200 and 201, Vol. II._)
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