Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

But there was a period in the Comatula's history when it was not a free-swimming star, but a lily-like flower of ten slender fringed petals, seated at the summit of a long stalk, with a central columnar axis of stone. Before that, the flower-head had a bud-like figure, and the petals were minute and destitute of lateral fringes; and earlier still, it was a tiny gelatinous club without any development of stone, affixed by a spreading base, and shooting forth from the top a few pellucid processes. Earlier still, it was, no doubt, an infusory-like gemmule, clothed with cilia.

Through all these successive stages, which, of course, occupied a considerable period of time, we should certainly affirm the Feather-star to have passed, did we not know that it has this very hour burst into existence.

That Panther, whose tawny fur studded with black rosettes appeared so beautiful as he bounded with agile grace from glade to glade just as we emerged from the forest, contains within his intestines, though you cannot see it, a mature Tapeworm. The body of this parasite consists of some hundreds of square flattened segments, each of which includes a complicated generative apparatus, equal to the production of thousands of fertile ova. Is not this an evidence of age? For, first of all, consider that the formation of each of these hundreds of joints has been a work of development from the anterior parts; and therefore they record as many distinct and successive processes as there are segments. And, secondly, remember that the Tænia did not commence existence as a Tænia, nor in the conditions in which it now exists, within the bowels of the Panther. It looks back to another form, and to another living nidus.

There was a time when this parasitic creature had no ribbon-like body of flattened generative segments. There was, indeed, the same curious head, a tiny globose knob at the extremity of a slender neck, furnished with the same array as now, of rows of hooks and sucking disks. But in place of the segments, the neck merged into a membranous bladder distended with clear fluid. It was not a Tænia then, but a Cysticercus.

Its home was at that time the interior of a living animal on whose vitalized juices it was sustained, but that animal was widely different from its present patron. It was an Antelope, that cropped the wiry grass and aromatic shrubs of the arid plain.

Earlier still, the germ of this Tænia was an egg lying on the ground, having been discharged from the rectum of another Panther, in the bowels of which it had been developed by one of the segments of a former Tænia.

Let us now trace the history of this organism onwards from the point at which we have arrived in our retrograde researches.

The parent Tænia, still snugly ensconced in its obscene abode, partially matured and then separated the ultimate generative segment, containing many thousands of ova, far advanced towards perfection. The detached segment now became enclosed in the fæces of the Carnivore, and was at length discharged, enveloped in the pellet. The eggs, acquiring maturity, were hatched, and the infant worms individually scattered themselves among the surrounding herbage.[66]

One of these was devoured with the herbage by a grazing Antelope, and having safely escaped the perilous ordeals of mastication and rumination, passed into the stomach of that Ruminant, whence it soon made its way by some unknown but unerring route to the liver, in the parenchyma of which organ it rapidly developed the cyst, which gave to the present stage its proper character.

The Antelope fell a prey to the ferocious Cat; its flesh was quickly digested in the stomach, but the gastric juice produced no effect on the Cysticercus. This parasite had merely changed its residence for one more commodious, or at least more suitable for its further development. It presently attached itself to the walls of the intestine by means of its oral hooks and suckers, and, getting rid of its vesicular sac, with its fluid contents, probably by absorption, it began to develop, joint by joint, that immense ribbon, which it possesses now, and which constitutes it a Tapeworm.