.. .//- 
 
 
 VTiM compliments of Dr, Agorastes. 
 
 AMPHIOXUSANDASGIDIAN 
 
 OUR GELATINOQS ANCESTORS. 
 
 EoTT the misidng links were discovered and made known. 
 
 Imitated from the German of M. Reymond {"Das neue 
 
 Laienbrevler des Hceckelismus : Gesang I'd), and dedicated to 
 
 ; . Professor R. Ramsay Wright, M. A., B. Sc, etc., and to the 
 
 ■; learned President and Members of the Canadian Institute, 
 
 Toronto, 
 
 ^. ■* 
 
 By DR. PHIL. AGORASTES. 
 
 A lancelet (Am- 
 phiosus lanceo- 
 iatus) finds it 
 pleasant on 
 Posilippo's 
 shore. 
 
 Horrid advent 
 of an anatomist 
 
 A slimy lancelet once lay 
 
 Half-hidden in the golden sand 
 Of Naples' blue and balmy bay — 
 And thought — hoW pleasant, here, to-day 
 Is Posilippo's strand. 
 
 But on the horizon's shadowy brim 
 
 A horrid vision doth arise — 
 A spectacled Professor grim ! 
 All things that creep, crawl, fly, or swim, 
 
 Must he anatomize! 
 
 #■ 
 
C4) 
 
 The lancelet 
 captured, and 
 pronounced a 
 vertebrate. 
 
 The lancelet's 
 objectiona to 
 thia view. 
 
 The Profeaaor'a 
 answer. 
 
 A deed of 
 horror. 
 
 Reault of 
 investigations. 
 
 A "find" his eager senses sniff — 
 
 He stoops — he sees: with joy elate 
 He grasps the creature in ^. jiff — 
 And cries — now, I'll be jiggered — if 
 It isn't vertebrate! 
 
 The victim groan'd — "Come, that's too pale- 
 Don't try on me that precious cram — 
 
 Limpid and soft from top to tail, 
 
 I'm nothing but a naked snail — 
 Ask Pallas* what I am 1 " 
 
 The horrid "Zoo" made answer, "nay! 
 
 I mean, my dear, myself to 'fix' it: 
 No wise man trusts what others say, 
 Or heeds, in this far-searching day, 
 
 The dead Past's ipse dixit:" 
 
 So saying, without more ado, 
 
 (To tender feeling sadly callous) 
 He slit poor Slimy through and through, 
 And bottled— as he'd bottle you — 
 This pseudo-snail of Pallas ! 
 
 And thus, although the little nata- 
 
 Torial beast has no backbone, 
 For reasons based on larval data 
 It came among the Vertebrata 
 
 A place, at last, to own ! 
 
 ♦ A celebrated German naturalist of the last centunr, who first 
 described the lancelet in 177*. *»«1 regarded it as a kind of slug. The 
 vertebraie nature of the animal, based on the presence of a chorda 
 dorsalis.was fir^t shewn by Corda.in 1834; *nd its relations to the 
 larval condition of certain tnnicates or ascidlans, by Kowalewslgf in 
 i8«6. It is now commonly looked upon as the lowest type of the tish 
 series. 
 
II. 
 
 Another 
 Professor I 
 
 A good " bag. " 
 
 The great news. 
 
 Heckel on the 
 move. 
 
 The miaffag 
 links. 
 
 Pass thirty years and two — Ah me! 
 
 How quick Time gallops! — Then there came 
 A learnt'd Russ to that blue sea — 
 To fish for tunicates came lie, 
 
 Also to fish for famel 
 
 And so before his zeal should flag, *''^ *- ' 
 
 Or fall below its high meridian* — 
 To work he went with dredge and drag. 
 And fished up quite a thumping bag 
 Of things ascidian ! 
 
 And then came out the startling truth — 
 Let all the world's four corners hear itl 
 
 The ascidian in its frisky youth 
 
 Is half a vertebrate, in sooth, 
 Or something somewhere near it I * 
 
 It 
 
 Swift sped the news o'er land and sea, 
 
 Till reaching Haeckel's ears — that great 
 Stera-framer — in vacation free — 
 Pack'd up, and went post-haste to see . 
 
 This yea-nay vertebrate! ' t 
 
 ''II': 
 
 And there, our great Ontogenist — *" 
 
 Whose word bewitches whilst it shocks us — 
 Beheld the links his System miss'd : 
 Yes, here they were — or he'd be hiss'd — 
 Ascidian — Amphioxus! 
 
 
 * I have touched the highest point— 
 And from that full meridian of my glory 
 I haste now to my ttttin^.—Shaktsptare, 
 
Tha Sttm- 
 
 Theory 
 
 compleied. 
 
 Tht Anal link. 
 
 All things are sure to one who waits: 
 And here the links at last were seen 
 
 Made manifest to meanost pates-— 
 
 In vertebra ted Vertebrates — 
 Fishes and worms between 1 
 
 Thus, haeckelism's wondrous gleam 
 
 Makes clear, to all, how all arose — 
 I?idiw&".*d hitd ruxw«*rj wciit the sireani 
 Of shifting forms, hke shapes of dream. 
 And found in us its close I 
 
 Toronto: March. 1878. 
 
 I t