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Updated: May 22, 2025
So we see the coral-reef-building polyps toiling with but little rest, almost incessantly labouring to raise architectural devices of infinite design, and other creatures as industriously tearing them down to form the solid foundation of continents. Another species of ECHINUS eludes its enemies by the adoption of a cumbersome and forbidding mask.
But the idea that the modification of any internal or external part of the body of an Echinus carries with it the effect of producing elongated, flexible, triradiate, snapping processes, is, to say the very least, fully as obscure and mysterious as what is here contended for, viz. the efficient presence of an unknown internal natural law or laws conditioning the evolution of new specific forms from preceding ones, modified by the action of surrounding conditions, by "Natural Selection" and by other controlling influences.
Then the young Crania adhered to the bared shell, grew and perished in its turn; after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before the Echinus became enveloped in chalky mud." A specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, still further prolongs the period which must have elapsed between the death of the sea-urchin, and its burial by the Globigerinae.
He was discovered up to his knees in a pool among the rocks, with a hammer and chisel in hand, working perseveringly under water. "No; you first make a statement totally at variance with the truth, and then ask a question," answered the young naturalist, looking up from his occupation, but apparently not well pleased at being interrupted. "That is the Echinus esculentus, or sea-urchin.
The downward force is already manifest in the widened base of the column, where it works in conjunction with the inward tendency, and shows its effect at the critical points at the top of the supporting column in the spreading echinus with its horizontal bands beneath and in the horizontal lines of the abaci.
Then the young Crania adhered to the bared shell, grew and perished in its turn; after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before the Echinus became enveloped in chalky mud." A specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, still further prolongs the period which must have elapsed between the death of the sea-urchin and its burial by the Globigeringæ.
And so, between the summit of the long shaft and that square block, the abacus, on which reposes the dead weight of the lintel of Greece, the Doric echinus was fashioned, crowning the serene Atlas-labor of the column with exquisite glory, and uniting the upright and horizontal masses of the order with a marriage ring, whose beauty is its perfect fitness.
When we come to the capital of the column, the rôles seem to be reversed, for we find nothing in Egyptian architecture to suggest the echinus moulding under the square abacus of the Doric column; whereas the Mycenaean column had a rudimentary capital which may have suggested the idea of the Doric capital.
It is true that on Darwinian principles the ancestral form from which the sea-urchin developed was different, and must not be conceived merely as an Echinus devoid of pedicellariæ; but this makes the difficulty none the less. It is equally hard to imagine that the first rudiments of such structures could have been useful to any animal from which the Echinus might have been derived.
The same difficulty seems to present itself in other examples of exceptional structure and action. In the same Echinus, as in many allied forms, and also in some more or less remote ones, a very peculiar mode of development exists. The adult is not formed from the egg directly, but the egg gives rise to a creature which swims freely about, feeds, and is even somewhat complexly organized.
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