16 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [Lect. I. 



length, the special characters of the type to which it 

 belongs begin to be seen. 



Nevertheless, in the embryo of a medium-sized 

 mammal — e.g., the Hyomoschus, a generalised ruminant 

 — nearly an inch long round the curve, I find nothing that 

 suggests its proper place in nature : it might belong to a 

 Lion, or to a Gorilla, as far as its outer form is concerned. 

 And yet an embryo of this kind — a sort of temporary, 

 sleeping, dependent larva — becomes, in one case, a Rear- 

 mouse with leathern wings, and in another a Whale, 

 whose skin and blubber are as thick as a house-wall. 



Lord Bacon gravely remarks that — " God hangs the 

 greatest matters on the smallest wires." He might have 

 been an embryologist ; certainly, neither a Darwin nor 

 a Huxley could have put such an aphorism into a 

 better form. 



Whale's eggs are no larger than " fern seed ;" and yet 

 the protoplasm in any one of them has the power, when 

 planted where it can get due nourishment, to develop an 

 embryo which, whilst as yet it is unborn, is as large as 

 a good-sized cow. This phenomenon of development, 

 which is always repeating itself in all mammals, only 

 not to so huge a bulk as in the instance just given, is as 

 great a "sign" or "wonder," or "miracle," as anything 

 suggested by the most thorough-going Darwinian as 

 part of the process of secular evolution. 



All this differentiation, all this development of com- 

 plex, correlated organs, in one single organism, worketh 



