90 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. (2) 



several eminent naturalists and philosophers ; for instance, 

 by Wallace, Huxley, Lyell. Vogt, Lubbock, Biichner, 

 RoUe, and especially by Haeckel." 



In the General Summary of his conclusions which he 

 advances in the same work, Darwin remarks : " By con- 

 sidering the embryological structure of man, — the homo- 

 logies which he presents with the lower animals, the 

 rudiments which he retains, and the reversions to which 

 he is liable — we can partly recall in imagination the former 

 condition of our early progenitors ; and can approximately 

 place them in their proper place in the zoological series. 

 We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed 

 quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits. This creature, 

 if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, 

 would have been classed among the Quadrumana, as 

 surely as the still more ancient progenitors of the Old and 

 New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the 

 higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient 

 marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified 

 forms, from some amphibian-like creature, and this again 

 from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the 

 past we can see that the early progenitor of the Vertebrata 

 must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchia*, 

 with the sexes united in the same individual, and with the 

 most important organs of the body (such as the l)rain and 

 heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal 

 seems to have been more like the larvae of the existing 

 marine Ascidians than any other known form." 



It is only with the last chapter of this history that the 

 present communication is concerned, and only very par- 

 tially with that ; for the subject is of such wide scope that 

 it is impossible in this case to treat it exhaustively. But 

 the object is to call attention to certain characters of 

 human babies, and to point out that in the main they are 

 totally foreign to characters which would have arisen in 



