[2][3][4] The last-cited reference gives special attention to how the ideas of Garstang's predecessors profoundly influenced his biological theories.

Before graduation, Garstang was offered a position as secretary and assistant to Gilbert C Bourne, the new resident director of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom in Plymouth.

In 1894, while Ray Lankester held the Linacre Chair, he became a lecturer at Lincoln College and in 1895 he started the series of Easter classes in which he took students on week-long field courses to Plymouth.

In 1912, in cooperation with Professor Alfred Denny of the University of Sheffield he established the Robin Hood's Bay Marine Laboratory.

The minutes of Sheffield's Faculty of Pure Science on 12 March 1912[10] record the following resolution that was carried unanimously: That the Faculty approves of the proposal to extend the work of the Department of Zoology by co-operating with the University of Leeds in establishing a small marine Zoological Laboratory at Robin Hood's Bay.

Garstang also argued that ontogeny creates [aspects of] phylogeny, in that embryonic development puts constraints on evolution, favoring particular evolutionary outcomes while excluding others.

Except for the introduction written by Sir Alister Hardy, everything in the final publication, including the title and order of the poems, was his own work.

Alister Hardy wrote on this in the Introduction to Larval Forms: Only a few months before he died Garstang had drafted a communication to Nature to put forward his latest suggestion that Amphioxus might be regarded as a paedomorphic ammocoete-like larva of a Cyclostome; it was never sent, because the day on which he was to have posted it he found that the whole of his idea had recently and quite independently been published by the great Stensio.Most of these poems were written before 1922 and reflect the knowledge and theories of that time.

The poems included in his final work are: Walter Garstang's most famous zoological verse, The Ballad of the Veliger, was first published in 1928 and privately printed.

[15] The Veliger's a lively tar, the liveliest afloat,A whirling wheel on either side propels his little boat;But when the danger signal warns his bustling submarine,He stops the engine, shuts the port, and drops below unseen.He's witnessed several changes in pelagic motor-craft;The first he sailed was just a tub, with a tiny cabin aft.An Archi-mollusk fashioned it, according to his kind,He'd always stowed his gills and things in a mantle-sac behind.Young Archi-mollusks went to sea with nothing but a velum—A sort of autocycling hoop, instead of pram—to wheel 'em;And, spinning round, they one by one acquired parental features,A shell above, a foot below—the queerest little creatures.But when by chance they brushed against their neighbours in the briny,Coelenterates with stinging threads and Arthropods so spiny,By one weak spot betrayed, alas, they fell an easy prey—Their soft preoral lobes in front could not be tucked away!Their feet, you see, amidships, next the cuddy-hole abaft,Drew in at once, and left their heads exposed to every shaft.So Archi-mollusks dwindled, and the race was sinking fast,When by the merest accident salvation came at last.A fleet of fry turned out one day, eventful in the sequel:Whose left and right retractors on the two sides were unequal:Their starboard halliards fixed astern alone supplied the head,While those set aport were spread abeam and served the back instead.Predaceous foes, still drifting by in numbers unabated,Were baffled now by tactics which their dining plans frustrated.Their prey upon alarm collapsed, but promptly turned about,With the tender morsel safe within and the horny foot without!This manoeuvre (fide Lamark) speeded up with repetition,Until the parts affected gained a rhythmical condition,And torsion, needing now no more a stimulating stab,Will take its predetermined course in a watchglass in the lab.In this way, then, the Veliger, triumphantly askew,Acquired his cabin for'ard, holding all his sailing crew—A Trochophore in armour cased, with a foot to work the hatch,And double screws to drive ahead with smartness and despatch.But when the first new Veligers came home again to shore,And settled down as Gastropods with mantle-sac afore,The Archi-mollusk sought a cleft his shame and grief to hide,Crunched horribly his horny teeth, gave up the ghost, and died.The National Marine Biological Library at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth holds some of Garstang's archival material (diaries and photographs) and documents relating to the Easter Classes.