The aims of Comparative Embryology as restricted in the present work are two-fold: (1) to form a basis for Phylogeny, and (2) to form a basis for Organogeny or the origin and evolution of organs. The justification for employing the results of Comparative Embryology in the solution of the problems in these two departments of science is to be found in the law above enunciated, but the results have to be employed with the qualifications already hinted at; and in both cases a knowledge of Comparative Anatomy is a necessary prelude to their application. In accordance with the above objects Comparative Embryology may be divided into two departments. The scientific method employed in both of these departments is that of comparison, and is in fact fundamentally the same as the method of Comparative Anatomy. By this method it becomes possible with greater or less certainty to distinguish the secondary from the primary or ancestral embryonic characters, to determine the relative value to be attached to the results of isolated observations, and generally to construct a science out of the rough mass of collected facts. It moreover enables each observer to know to what points it is important to direct his attention, and so prevents that simple accumulation of disconnected facts which is too apt to clog and hinder the advance of the science it is intended to promote. In the department of Phylogeny the following are the more important points aimed at. (1) To test how far Comparative Embryology brings to light ancestral forms common to the whole of the Metazoa. Examples of such forms have been identified by various embryologists in the ovum itself, supposed to represent the unicellular ancestral form of the Metazoa: in the ovum at the close of segmentation regarded as the polycellular Protozoon parent form: in the two-layered gastrula, etc., regarded by Haeckel as the ancestral form of all the Metazoa[4]. [4] The value of these identifications as well as of those below is discussed in its appropriate place in the body of the work. Their citation here is not to be regarded as necessarily implying my acceptance of them. (2) How far some special embryonic larval form is constantly reproduced in the ontogeny of the members of one or more groups of the animal kingdom; and how far such larval forms may be interpreted as the ancestral type for those groups. As examples of such forms may be cited the six-limbed Nauplius supposed by Fritz Müller to be the ancestral form of the Crustacea; the trochosphere larva of Lankester, which he considers to be common to the Mollusca, Vermes, and Echinodermata; the planula of the Coelenterata, etc.