72 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



Why dost thou grin at me, thou hollow skull ? 



As though of old thy brain, like mine, was vexed, 

 Had looked to find bright day, but in the twilight dull, 



In search for truth, was sad and sore perplexed ! " 



Goethe. 



Both in prose and in poetry man is very often compared 

 to a worm. "A miserable worm/' "a poor worm," are 

 common and almost compassionate phrases. If we cannot 

 detect any deep phylogenetic reference in this zoological 

 metaphor, we might at least safely assert that it contains 

 an unconscious comparison with a low condition of animal 

 development which is interesting in its bearing on the 

 pedigree of the human race. For there is no doubt that 

 the vertebrate tribe, in common with those of the other 

 higher classes of animals, have developed phylogenetically 

 from that multiform group of lower invertebrate animals 

 which are now called Worms. However closely we limit 

 the zoological significance of the word " Worm," it yet 

 remains indubitable that a large number of extinct Worms 

 must be reckoned among the direct ancestors of the human 

 race. 



The group of Worms (Vermes) is much more limited in 

 the Zoology of the present day, than was the same class in 

 the older Zoology, which followed the system of Linnseus. 

 It, however, yet includes a great number of very diverse 

 lower animals, which, phylogenetically, we may regard as 

 the few last living twigs of an immense spreading tree, 

 the trunk and main branches of which have for the most 

 part long since died off. On the one side, among the 

 widely divergent classes of Worms, are found the parent- 

 forms of the four higher tribes of animals, the Molluscs, 

 Star-animals, Articulates, and Vertebrates ; on the other side, 



