Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/665

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NEW VIEWS OF ANIMAL TRANSFORMATIONS.
635

ual is now definitely constituted. Is not this the same law which presides over the transformation of savages into civilized people? Have not nations, corporations even, a consciousness and will? Do they not form great units which we designate by one word in current language?

The transformations we have followed step by step in the class of Polyps are not restricted to these animals. It is easy to show how

Fig. 12.—Trematode Worm.

simple forms are again associated, in the group of Worms, to obtain the more complex forms. We find here the same laws as in studying the Polyps, Long ago, Van Beneden, Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, affirmed that each joint of a tape-worm (Fig. 11) was

Fig. 13.—Somites of Insect.

the equivalent of a Trematode worm (Fig. 12); and Douve still earlier taught that the rings of a worm, or of an insect, were considered