human
--_omne vivum ex ovo_; but this, like a good many other old aphorisms, is only a convenient and attractive way of stating a falsehood. It is very true that almost all animals, from man down to the mollusk, pass through the egg stage at an early period of their existence; but we purpose to show our readers in this article that there are others which appear to be sometimes exempted from the common lot of their kind, and which indeed come into the world in such curious fashions that we may almost say of them, in the words of Topsey, that they