66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



punishment after death. These three sanctions must always exist. 

 The science of morality might not have any effect in compelling its 

 laws to he observed, hut it undoubtedly would explain to many minds 

 which now are groping in darkness and disbelief the why and where- 

 fore of moral codes. 



EECENT PEOGEESS IN BIOLOGY. 



By E. EAY LANKESTEE. 



THE English universities have at various times in their history been 

 remarkable as centers of scientific investigation and progress. 

 The Eoyal Society took its origin in Oxford about two hundred and 

 forty years ago, and from time to time there have been brilliant groups 

 of scientific investigators in either university who have, though sepa- 

 rated by intervals of darkness, sufficed to maintain the character of 

 these institutions as something more than schools of classical training 

 or mathematical gymnastic. At the present moment the energy of 

 the Biological school, which has grown up in Cambridge within the 

 last fifteen years, forms one of the most remarkable features among 

 the many recent evidences of healthy life and of capacity for the per- 

 formance of its great national duties which that time-honored institu- 

 tion has afforded. 



One of the most fascinating problems of biology is that involved 

 in the attempt to trace out the pedigrees of the immense variety of 

 living plants and animals according to the teachings of Charles Dar- 

 win. Every animal grows from a perfectly simple homogeneous egg 

 to the more or less complicated form which it presents when adult, 

 and we have reason to believe that the changes through which the 

 growing developing " embryo " passes correspond to a large extent, 

 according to certain definite laws, with the changes through which its 

 ancestors have passed in the greater evolution of the world. Accord- 

 ingly, these embryonic changes, if rightly understood, can furnish us 

 with the most important evidence as to the ancestry, and therewith 

 the pedigree and family relationships, of the various kinds of existing 

 animals. The study of embryology, from this point of view, was fol- 

 lowed with great success by the late Professor Frank Balfour (whose 

 early death has caused incalculable loss to science), and is being prose- 

 cuted in Germany and America, but nowhere more energetically than 

 by Balfour's pupils. It will be readily understood that if the history 

 of growth from the egg can furnish a clew to the ancestral relation- 

 ships of various animals, then the discovery of this history in the case 

 of curious and abnormal animals must be especially important. The 

 histories of whole groups of common animals will necessarily be very 

 much alike, and there is no likelihood of one differing from another in 



