Hence the budding of medusae exemplifies very clearly a common phenomenon in development, a phylogenetic series of events completely dislocated in the ontogenetic time-sequence.
But this phylogenetic differentiation of the organs was not what Wolff and Goethe had in mind; what they contemplated was an ontogenetic change, and there is abundant evidence that such changes actually occur.
In other words, a balance appears to be always sustained between the internal (hereditary and ontogenetic) and the external (environmental and selectional) factors of evolution.
The development of Phoronis was supposed by Caldwell (2) to furnish the explanation of the relations of the surfaces in Brachiopoda, Polyzoa and perhaps the Sipunculoid Gephyrea, in which the ontogenetic evidence is less clear.
The general proposition as to a parallelism between individual and ancestral development is no doubt indisputable, but extended knowledge of the very different ontogenetic histories of closely allied forms has led us to a much fuller conception of the mode in which stages in embryonic and larval history have been modified in relation to their surroundings, and to a consequent reluctance to attach detailed importance to the embryological argument for evolution.