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Unfortunately, this trustful theory is in such flagrant contradiction to all the known facts of paleontology and embryology that it is no longer worth serious scientific consideration. But the case is no better for the much-discussed descent of the Vertebrates from the Annelids, which Dohrn afterwards maintained with great zeal.
Dohrn himself, who may have a few unoccupied tables at his disposal, and who will surely extend the courtesy of their occupancy, for a reasonable period, to any proper applicant, come he whence he may. Thus it chances that one finds men of all nations working in the Naples laboratory biologists from all over Europe, including Russia, from America, from Australia, from Japan.
Although never seeming to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame, in importing his own wine, which he accused my German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers cheered him up Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect botanist all of them dead now!
He organized a laboratory; he called about him a corps of able assistants; he made the Marine Biological Laboratory at Naples famous, the Mecca of all biological eyes throughout the world. It was not all done in a day. It was far enough from being done without opposition and discouragement; but these are matters of history which Dr. Dohrn now prefers not to dwell upon.
It has descended from the Cyclostoma by a profound degeneration, and these in turn from the fishes; even the Ascidia and the whole of the Tunicates are merely degenerate fishes! Following out this curious theory, Dohrn came to contest the general belief that the Coelenterata and Worms are "lower animals"; he even declared that the unicellular Protozoa were degenerate Coelenterata.
I remember a conversation with Doctor Dohrn, the head of the great biological station at Naples, some four or five years ago. He was complaining of want of adequate subventions from Berlin. "Everything is wanted for the Navy," he said. "And what really does Germany want with such a navy?" I asked. "She is always saying that she certainly does not regard it as a weapon against England."
It was almost simultaneously formulated by Carl Semper, of Wurtzburg, and Anton Dohrn, of Naples. The latter advanced this theory originally in favour of the failing degeneration theory, with which I dealt in my work, Aims and Methods of Modern Embryology.
Dohrn, then a young man fresh from the universities of his native Germany, discovered what he felt to be a real need in the biological world. He was struck with the fact that nowhere in the world could be found an establishment affording good opportunities for the study of marine life.
Of late years this hypothesis, which raised so much dust and controversy, has been entirely abandoned by most competent zoologists, even those who once supported it. Its chief supporter, Dohrn, admitted in 1890 that it is "dead and buried," and made a blushing retraction at the end of his Studies of the Early History of the Vertebrate.
As yet, it must be admitted, the question is not decisively answered, several rival theories contending for supremacy in the case. One of the most important of these theories had its origin at the Naples laboratory; indeed, Dr. Dohrn himself is its author. This is the view that the type of the invertebrate ancestor is the annelid a form whose most familiar representative is the earth-worm.
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