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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



brates, for instance, the frog and the newt, whose 

 changes of form are so familiar to us. Still, for 

 the most part, in the vertebrata " these things 

 are done in a corner ; " their most important 

 changes of form are hidden from unassisted vi- 

 sion ; to search out those secrets is the work of 

 the morphologist. 



Here, however, I will let " that old man elo- 

 quent " — Lord Bacon — speak for me ; he says 

 that Solomon, who was a great example with him, 

 did " compile a natural history of all verdure, 

 from the cedar upon the mountain to the moss 

 upon the wall " (which is but a rudiment between 

 putrefaction and an herb), "and also of all things 

 that breathe or move. Nay, the same Solomon, 

 the king, although he excelled in the glory of 

 treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping 

 and navigation, of service and attendance, of 

 fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no 

 claim to any of those glories, but only to the 

 glory of inquisition of truth ; for so he saith ex- 

 pressly, ' The glory of God is to conceal a thing, 

 but the glory of the king is to find it out ; ' as if, 

 according to the innocent play of children, the 

 Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to 

 the end to have them found out ; and as if kings 

 could not obtain a greater honor than to be 

 God's playfellows in that game ; considering the 

 great commandment of wits and means, whereby i 

 nothing needeth to be hidden from them." 



It seems to us now a little thing for a great 

 mind meditating upon the form of a vertebrated 

 animal to think that the axial structures should 

 pass into the skull, when the main nervous axis 

 so manifestly expands to become the brain. Yet 

 men were held in bondage from generation to 

 generation by the force of mere teleological ideas, 

 that do but, as Bacon expresses it, "slug and 

 stay the ship from sailing." In one place he 

 compares people who will have all these mean- 

 ings and ends of things at any cost, and who can- 

 not bear to look at things in the "dry light" of 

 their efficient causes, to those low and sensual 

 people of whom one reads in Holy Writ, who 

 accounted the manna as poor, thin diet, and 

 clamored for the onions, the leek, and the gar- 

 lic, that flavored the flesh-pots of Egypt. Now, 

 however, the study of structures, according to 

 their mere uses, and the imagining of ideal ex- 

 emplars, these modes, the one imperfect and the 

 other illusory, are giving place to the observa- 

 tion of the rise and progress in life of living 

 creatures. 



This rise and progress may be traced grada- 

 tionally ; which is a tracing of form after form in 



the adult animals existing at the present time — 

 a most profitable study surely. To this has been 

 added (within the last century almost) the inves- 

 tigation of forms that have become extinct ; here, 

 in "paleontology," we come athwart forms that 

 are lower in type than their nearest relatives 

 now living. Lower, and more generalized, are 

 they : and thus the mind is led to look toward 

 the causes that have operated in the extinction 

 of the old, rough, archaic forms, and the produc- 

 tion or creation of the " lovely living things " that 

 now adorn the earth. These are very often 

 smaller, and, as a rule, more specialized in all re- 

 spects, beautified, refined, and elevated, in type 

 beyond anything that could have been seen in 

 their predecessors or progenitors. But that which 

 both the gradationalist and paleontologist want, 

 is a knowledge of the development of the types, 

 their life-history indeed. 



Here is the work, this is the labor ! Our im- 

 mediate fathers began it ; we have entered into 

 their labors ; but our children's children will have 

 their hands full, not for one, but for many genera- 

 tions. Were this done — could we describe in 

 detail the rise and progress of every part, and of 

 every organ in the structure of any form in the 

 genera, families, orders, classes, and sub-kingdoms 

 of the animnl kingdom — we might then come to 

 some conclusion as to the relations of these vari- 

 ous forms, and make some safe guesses as to how 

 they have arisen. Nevertheless, if we cannot do 

 all, that is no reason why we should do nothing, 

 and stand as men who cannot find their hands ; 

 the light is breaking in upon us already, albeit 

 the work fias but just been begun. The relations 

 of living forms to each other — even in the adults — 

 and the relations of extinct to living types — these 

 flowers of science are opening and displaying their 

 beauties to patient observers. We are now not 

 merely considering the relations of the various 

 vertebrate classes to each other, or of the various 

 articulate, or molluscous, or radiated classes, with- 

 in their own special circle; but embryology is 

 leading us to the origin, as it were, of each great 

 primary group, and of the branching off, so to 

 speak, of each great group from some common 

 stock. 



However admirable in form and action man 

 now is, he will soon, as a vertebrate, be ready to 

 call the worm his sister and his mother ; for his 

 group is being set side by side with the worm- 

 group — with the living forms from which sprang 

 the " poor beetle," and the laboring ant. Indeed, 

 as seven cities claimed Homer, so several inver- 

 tebrate stocks now claim to have given birth to 



