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Updated: May 13, 2025
In the same way certain of the higher Radiates undergo all their transformations, from the Polyp phase of growth to that of Acaleph or Echinoderm, after birth; while others pass rapidly through the lower phases of their existence within the egg, and are born in their final condition, when all their intermediate changes have been completed.
It is not strange that the relation between the various phases of this extraordinary series of metamorphoses, so different from each other in their external aspects, should not have been recognized at once, and that this singular Acaleph should have been called Scyphostoma in its simple Hydroid condition, Strobila after the transverse division of the body had taken place, Ephyra in the first stages of its free existence, and Aurelia in its adult state, being thus described as four distinct animals.
It is by its soft parts alone those parts which are seen only in its living state, and when the animal is fully open that its Acalephian character can be perceived, and this accounts for its being so long accepted as a Polyp, when studied in the dry Coral stock. Nothing could exceed my astonishment when for the first time I saw such an animal fully expanded, and found it to be a true Acaleph.
But to establish the fact that one of the Corals represented from the earliest period till now, and indeed far more numerous in the beginning than any other, was in truth no Polyp, but an Acaleph, the glimpse I had was all-sufficient. It came out as if to bear witness of its class, as if to say, "We, too, were among the hosts of living beings with which God first peopled His earth."
As I have said, they were for a long time supposed, notwithstanding these differences, to be Polyps, and I had shared in this opinion, till, during the winter of 1857, while pursuing my investigations on the Coral Reefs of Florida, one of these Millepores revealed itself to me in its true character of Acaleph.
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