This distribution of the eyes around a large portion of the margin, and certain other characteristics of the adult structure and of the embryonic development, are very interesting, as giving hints of the development of the turbellaria from some radiate ancestor.  The mouth is in a most unfavorable position, in or near the middle of the body, rarely at the front end, as the animal has to swim over its food before it can grasp it.  The animal only slowly rids itself of old disadvantageous form and structure and adapts itself completely to a higher mode of life.

By far the most highly developed system in the body is the reproductive.  It is doubtful whether any animal, except, perhaps, the mollusk, has as complicated and highly developed reproductive organs.  By markedly higher forms they certainly grow simpler.

And here we must notice certain general considerations.  We found that reproduction in the amoeba could be defined as growth beyond the limit normal to the individual.  This form of growth benefits especially the species.  The needs and expenses of the individual will therefore first be met and then the balance be devoted to reproduction.  Now the income of the animal is proportional to its surface, its expense to its mass, and activity.  And the ratio of surface to mass is most favorable in the smallest animals.[A] Hence, smaller animals, as a rule, increase faster than larger ones; and this is only one illustration of the fact that great size in an animal is anything but an unmixed advantage to its possessor.  But muscles and nerves are the most expensive systems; here most of the food is burned up.  Hence energetic animals have a small balance remaining.  Now the turbellarian is small and sluggish, with a fair digestive system.  With a great amount of nutriment at its disposal the reproductive system came rapidly to a high development, and relatively to other organs stands higher than it almost ever will again.

  [Footnote A:  Cf. p. 35.]

It is only fair to state that good authorities hold that so primitive an animal could not originally have had so highly developed a system, and that this characteristic must be acquired, not ancestral.

That certain portions of it may be later developments may be not only possible but probable.  But anyone who has carefully studied the different groups of worms, will, I think, readily grant that in the stage of these flat worms reproduction was the dominant function, which had most nearly attained its possible height of development.  From this time on the muscular and nervous systems were to claim an ever-increasing share of the nutriment, and the balance for reproduction is to grow smaller.

At the close of this lecture I wish to describe very briefly a hypothetical form.  It no longer exists; perhaps it never did.  But many facts of embryology and comparative anatomy point to such a form as a very possible ancestor of all forms higher than flat worms, viz., mollusks, arthropods, and vertebrates.