ONTOGENY OF MAN. 29 



-1 



cells, by the division of labour among tbem, and by their 

 perfecting, there arises the perfect organism, the compli- 

 cated composition of which excites our admiration. 



It seems to me here indispensable to draw attention 

 more closely to those infinitely important and interesting 

 processes which accompany ontogenesis, or the individual 

 developvient of organisms, and especially to that of verte- 

 brate animals, man included. I wish especially to recom- 

 mend these exceedingly remarkable and instructive phe- 

 nomena to the reader's most careful consideration, first, 

 because they are among the strongest supports of the Theory 

 of Descent, and secondly, because, considering their immense 

 general importance, they have hitherto been properly con- 

 sidered only by a few privileged persons. 



We cannot indeed but be astonished when we consider 

 the deep ignorance which still prevails, in the widest circles, 

 about the facts of the individual development of man and 

 organisms in general. These facts, the universal importance 

 of which cannot be estimated too highly, were established, 

 in their most important outlines, even more than a hundred 

 years ago, in 1759, by the great German naturalist Caspar 

 Friedriech Wolfi*, in his classical " Theoria Generationis." 

 But, just as Lamarck's Theory of Descent, founded in 1809, 

 lay dormant for half a century, and was only awakened to 

 new and imperishable life in 1859, by Darwin, in like 

 manner Wolff"s Theory of Epigenesis remained unknown for 

 nearly half a century; and it was only after Oken, in 1806, 

 had published his history of the development of the in- 

 testinal tube, and after Meckel, in 1812, had translated 

 Wolffs work (written in Latin) on the same subject into 



German, that Wolfi's theory of epigenesis became more gener- 

 14 



