DESCENT OF MAX FROM SOME LOWER FORM. 129 



The inquirer would next come to the important point 

 whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead 

 to occasional severe struggles for existence : and conse- 

 quently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, 

 being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the 

 races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, 

 encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally 

 become extinct ? We shall see that all these questions, as 

 indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be 

 answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with 

 the lower animals. 



POINTS OF CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MAN AND THE 

 OTHER ANIMALS. 



e Descent I* i fi notorious that man is constructed on 

 Man , the same general type or model as other mam- 

 mals. All the bones in his skeleton can be 

 compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or 

 seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and 

 internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all 

 the organs, follows the same law, as shown by Huxley and 

 other anatomists. Bischoff, who is a hostile witness, ad- 

 mits that every chief fissure and fold in the brain of man 

 has its analogy in that of the orang ; but he adds that at 

 no period of development do their brains perfectly agree ; 

 nor could perfect agreement be expected, for otherwise 

 their mental powers would have been the same. 



Man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and 

 to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydropho- 

 bia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc. ; 

 and this fact proves the close similarity of their tissues 

 and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far 

 more plainly than does their comparison under the best 



