Excerpt from The Development of Renilla

I was therefore much pleased when a lucky accident, during the summer of 1880, put me in possession of a few very young colonies. Subsequent search over the ground resulted in the discovery of a considerable number of young colonies in various stages of growth, and I was thus enabled to make a rather full study of the growth of the colony from the simple primary or axial polyp up to the adult organism with its secondary polyps in a state of full sexual maturity. A single specimen, finally, of the ciliated larva was taken at the surface and kept in the aquarium until the free-swim ming life was abandoned and the characteristic tentacles and spicules made their appearance.

An outline of the general results of these observations was published in the American Journal of Science for December, 1880, a full description being however deferred in the hope of procuring still earlier stages for a study of the embryonic development. This hope was happily realised in the following summer, when two or three lots of fertilised eggs were obtained, and, finally, in the season of 1882, the eggs were procured in considerable abundance, and a very satisfactory study of the phenomena of development was effected.

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