Natural as may seem the assemblage included under Arthropoda, there is no group in which adaptive modifications have introduced so much diversity of anatomical and physiological relations. Metamorphoses, the changes of form which changes of external conditions have promoted, are met with of very various amount. The progress of the embryo from the first appearance of the blastoderm up to sexual maturity of the adult may be direct, without metamorphosis, or may be retarded by changes of form and habit, rendering the young animal capable of sustaining life under very various conditions. In any one of these stages, even in the adult, multiplication may be provided for by a process of budding, the bud from which the new form emerges being in essence undistinguishable from the ovum for whose further development impregnation is necessary. These metamorphoses are probably of late origin in the history of the group, their perpetuation being due to change in their surroundings. Their relations may be “falsified by the struggle for existence,” the details of the developmental history of the family (phylogenesis) may be crowded into a short space in the development of the individual (Ontogenesis). The description of these variations belongs to the particular treatment of the Crustaceans, Myriapods, Arachnids, and Insects.
(j. y.)
ARTHUR, or Artus, a hero of the Welsh Tales, the Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Romances of the Round Table. His exploits, even the most fabulous, passed with historians, before the days of historical criti cism; subsequently a reaction led to the figure of Arthur being regarded aa nothing but a Celtic myth. The truth, so far as it is possible to arrive at it, lies between these two extremes. There was a real Arthur, one of the last Celtic chiefs in Great Britain ; but there is no single trait of his real character and exploits which legends, working according to laws to be presently discussed, have not re modelled and transfigured or disfigured; while the scarcity of documents makes it impossible to reconstruct a coherent historical picture. Thus the work of comparison between the historical and the legendary personages, such as has been performed for Charlemagne by MM. Gaston Paris and Leon Gautier, is impossible in the case of Arthur. We can only study the legend and analyse its elements.
supposes that myths and legends arc arbitrary creations, and does not recognise them as having an origin in regular causes, and therefore a rational history, before the period when they are crystallised into their final legendary form, or are merged in the current of a literature in that later and artificial stage when it disinters and refashions old materials. Before Arthur took his final French form in the Romances of the Round Table, he was a Celtic hero in the Breton, and more specifically still in the yet earlier Welsh, legends.
And behind these is the original Arthur, of whom we must