been almost entirely replaced by mollusks. The same may very
possibly be true of others. For of the amount of extinction of
larger groups we have generally but an exceedingly faint conception.
Indeed in this respect the worms have been well compared to the
relics which fill the shelves of one of our grandmother's
china-closets.

The four great branches are the echinoderms, mollusks, articulates,
and vertebrates. The echinoderms, including starfishes, sea-urchins,
and others straggled early from the great army. We know as yet
almost nothing of their history; when deciphered it will be as
strange as any romance. The vertebrates are of course the most
important line, as including the ancestors of man. But we must take
a little glance at mollusks, including our clams, snails, and
cuttle-fishes; and at the articulates, including annelids and
culminating in insects. The molluscan and articulate lines, though
divergent, are of great importance to us as throwing a certain
amount of light on vertebrate development; and still more as showing
how a certain line of development may seem, and at first really be,
advantageous, and still lead to degeneration, or at best to but
partial success.

When we compare the forms which represent fairly well the direction
of development of these three lines, a snail or a clam with an
insect and a fish, we find clearly, I think, that the fundamental
anatomical difference lies in the skeleton; and that this resulted
from, and almost irrevocably fixed, certain habits of life.

We may picture to ourselves the primitive ancestor of mollusks as a
worm having the short and broad form of the turbellaria, but much