Note 13 — Chapter II

It is not within the scope of this work to enter into details with reference to the process of budding. The reader is referred on this head more especially to the papers of Huxley (No. 16) and Kowalevsky (No. 22) on Pyrosoma, of Salensky (No. 35) on Salpa, and Kowalevsky (No. 21) on Ascidians generally. It is a question of very great interest how budding first arose, and then became so prevalent in these degenerate types of Chordata. It is possible to suppose that budding may have commenced by the division of embryos at an early stage of development, and have gradually been carried onwards by the help of natural selection till late in life. There is perhaps little in the form of budding of the Ascidians to support this view—the early budding of Didemnum as described by Gegenbaur being the strongest evidence for it—but it fits in very well with the division of the embryo in Lumbricus trapezoides described by Kleinenberg, and with the not unfrequent occurrence of double monsters in Vertebrata which may be regarded as a phenomenon of a similar nature (Rauber). The embryonic budding of Pyrosoma, which might perhaps be viewed as supporting the hypothesis, appears to me not really in favour of it; since the Cyathozooid of Pyrosoma is without doubt an extremely modified form of zooid, which has obviously been specially developed in connection with the peculiar reproduction of the Pyrosomidæ.