PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY. 739 



To the next objection, that the practice of vice is not inevitably 

 suicidal, since many rascals live to attain as green an old age as the 

 most righteous, it is sufficient to say that, plentiful as these exceptions 

 may occasionally seem, their proportion to the whole number is at 

 least as small as that of the exceptions to any other general law of 

 biology. The policeman on the next corner will bear decided testi- 

 mony that the number of scoundrels who survive their thirtieth year 

 is astonishingly small, and he can point out any number of very troub- 

 lesome members of the community who are ending their lives in peni- 

 tentiary or poor-house hospitals, at an age when well-behaved men are 

 just entering upon the serious business of life. 



It is also demonstrable that the proportion of vicious men to the 

 whole population is much less to-day than at any previous period in 

 the history of the race. This shows conclusively the improvement of 

 society by the self-destructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad 

 men is steadily diminishing, because bad men die sooner, and propa- 

 gate fewer, than good ones. 



-- 



PROGRESS OF THE BACKBONED FAMILY.* 



By ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY. 



THERE is much uncertainty as to how the backboned or vertebrate 

 animals began ; but the best clew we have to the mystery is found 

 in a little, half-transparent creature, about two inches long, which is 

 still to be found living upon the English shores and the Southern At- 

 lantic coast of the United States. This small, insignificant animal is 

 called the " Lancelet," because it is shaped something like the head of 

 a lance ; and it is in many ways so imperfect that naturalists believe 

 it to be a degraded form, like the acorn-barnacle that is to say, that 

 it has probably lost some of the parts which its ancestors once pos- 

 sessed. But, in any case, it is the most simple backboned animal we 

 have, and shows us how the first feeble forms may have lived. Truly, 

 it is only by courtesy that we can call him a backboned animal, for all 

 he has is a cord of gristle, pointed at both ends, which stretches all 

 along the middle of his body above his long, narrow stomach ; while 

 above this, again, is another cord containing his nerve-telegraph. 



There are large fishes, too, which have this cartilaginous back- 

 bone. The young shark has nothing but a rod of gristle or cartilage, 

 and, though he is one of the strongest of sea-animals, he retains this 

 gristly state of his skeleton throughout his life ; however much he may 

 strengthen it by hard matter, it never becomes true bone. 



* Abridged from Miss Buckley's book, entitled " Winners in Life's Race ; or, The 

 Great Backboned Family," from which also the illustrations are borrowed. 



