CONCLUDING REMARKS. 225 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



A retrospect of the varied forms and proportions of the 

 skeletons of animals, whether modified for aquatic, aerial, 

 or terrestrial life, will show that whilst they were per- 

 fectly and beautifully adapted to the sphere of life and 

 exigences of the species, they adhered v/ith remarkable 

 constancy to that general pattern or archetype which was 

 first manifested on this planet, as Geology teaches, in the 

 class of fishes, and which has not been departed from even 

 in the most extremely modified skeleton of the last and 

 highest form which Creative Wisdom has been pleased to 

 place upon this earth. 



It is no mere transcendental dream, but true knowledge 

 and legitimate fruit of inductive research, that clear in- 

 sight into the essential nature of each element of the bony 

 framework, which is acquired by tracing them step by 

 step, as e. g. from the unbranched pectoral ray of the 

 lepid(5Siren to th^ equally small and slender . but bifid 

 pectoral ray of the amphiume, thence to the similar, but 

 trifid ray of the proteus, and through the progressively 

 superadded structures and perfections of the limbs in 

 higher reptiles and in mammals. If the special ho- 

 mology of each, part of the diverging appendage and its 

 supporting arch are recognizable from man to the fish, 

 we cannot close the mind's eye to the evidences of that 

 higher law of archetypal conformity on which the very 

 power of tracing the lower and more special correspond- 

 ences depend. 



Buffon has well remarked, in the Introduction to his 

 great work on Natural History : " It is only by compar- 



