124 J. HOPKIKSOIf — ANKIVEESAJIT ADDRESS : 



accompanied by elaboration of other organs which are useful, and 

 they do not therefore indicate degeneration of the type. 



But the gradual modification of certain organs, and their special 

 degeneration co-existent with a general elaboration of the type, are 

 nowhere more distinctly seen than in the pedigree of the horse, 

 which has been traced backwards in time from the recent and the 

 slightly dissimilar fossil Equus with a single toe and two lateral 

 rudiments, the splint-bones, to an Eocene ancestor, about the size 

 of a fox, with '' four well-developed toes and a rudiment of another 

 on the fore-feet, and three toes behind." In America, between 

 the recent Equus^ which had become extinct there before that 

 continent was discovered by Europeans, and the Lower Eocene 

 Eohippus, at least five closely-related equine genera have been 

 discovered by Professor Marsh, each genus showing, in comparison 

 with the one preceding it in time, an increase in the size of the 

 animal, and elaboration of certain organs such as the teeth, with a 

 gradual development of the middle toe, and suppression of the 

 others one by one. Surely this is, as Professor Huxley says, 

 demonstrative evidence of evolution. 



It may be thought that man should be excepted from the 

 scheme of evolution, his intellect, by giving him the power to 

 devise and use tools, and to form a language, having enabled him 

 to raise himself infinitely above any of the lower animals, and to 

 make himself "lord of the creation." There can be no question, 

 either, as to his specific distinctness, for by common consent he has 

 a genus to himself, and this genus. Homo, has but a single species, 

 though one with many varieties, some of which, were there not 

 connecting links, might be considered species. Yet the late Sir 

 Eichard Owen, than whom few men have more reluctantly accepted 

 the theory of descent with modification, especially as applied to 

 man, said, in 1857, two years before the appearance of the ' Origin 

 of Species:' "Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the 

 distinction between the psychical phenomena of a Chimpanzee and 

 of a Boschisman or of an Aztec with aiTcsted brain growth, as 

 being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between 

 them, or as being other than a difference of degree, I cannot shut 

 my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of 

 structure — every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous — which 

 makes the determination of the tlifference between Homo and 

 Pithecus, the anatomist's difficulty." 



Professor Huxley, also, has shown that man, in the early stages 

 of his development, is far nearer to the apes than the apes are to 

 the dog ; that in limb -proportion man differs less from the gorilla 



