The study of the forms which lived on the earth in past ages confirms and emphasizes this conclusion, for it is most striking to see how small is the cranium among the gigantic Dinosaurs; how in the great reptilian age the denizens of the earth were far inferior in brain-power to the lords of creation in after-times. What applies to the vertebrate phylum applies also to the invertebrate groups. Here also an upward progress is recognized as we {18}pass from the sponges to the arthropods--a progress which is manifested, first by the concentration of nervous material to form a central nervous system, and then by the increase in substance and complexity of that nervous system to form a higher and a higher type, until the culmination is reached in the nervous system of the scorpions and spiders. No upward progress is possible with degeneration of the central nervous system, and in all those cases where a group owes its existence to degeneration, the central nervous system takes part in the degeneration. This law of the paramount importance of the growth of the central nervous system for all upward progress in the evolution of animals receives confirmation from the study of the development of individuals, especially in those cases where a large portion of the life of the animal is spent in a larval condition, and then, by a process of transformation, the larva changes into the adult form. Such cases are well known among Arthropoda, the familiar instance being the change from the larval caterpillar to the adult imago. Among Vertebrata, the change from the tadpole to the frog, from the larval form of the lamprey (_Ammocoetes_) to the adult form (_Petromyzon_), are well-known instances. In all such cases the larva shows signs of having attained a certain stage in evolution, and then a remarkable transformation takes place, with the result that an adult animal emerges, whose organization reaches a higher stage of evolution than that of the larva. This transformation process is characterized by a very great destruction of the larval tissues and a subsequent formation of new adult tissues. Most extensive is the destruction in the caterpillar and in the larval lamprey. But one organ never shares in this process of histolysis, and that is the central nervous system; amidst the ruins of the larva it remains, leading and directing the process of re-formation. In the Arthropoda, the larval alimentary canal may be entirely destroyed and eaten up by phagocytes, but the central nervous system not only remains intact but increases in size, and by the concentration and cephalization of its infra-oesophageal ganglia forms in the adult a central nervous system of a higher type than that of the larva.