Likenesses ; or, Philosophical Ajiatomy 255 



skeleton of every existing vertebrate animal was represented 

 as being: formed from some modification of an ideal arche- 

 typal skeleton, which was again represented as composed of a 

 series of ideal archetypal vertebrae. This notion for a time 

 met with very general acceptance, but was, ere long, attacked, 

 especially by Professor Huxley, as being inconsistent with 

 the facts of development. It was said that if the skull was 

 made up of modified vertebrae, its vertebrate character should 

 be plainest in its earliest and least modified stages ; and that 

 yet such stages had no resemblance to vertebrae at all. 

 Indeed, it was triumphantly shown that, as soon as the back- 

 bone begins to be a backbone, the skull begins to be some- 

 thing very different. It was shown, in fact, that the skull is 

 never segmented, as is the primitive vertebral column, but 

 mainly consists, in its earlier stage, of a mass of cartilage, 

 from which two cartilaginous rods (the trahecnlm cranii) 

 extend forwards along the base of the brain case quite unlike 

 anything found in the incipient vertebral column. Yet other 

 suggestions were made by Professor Seeley and by Mr. Her- 

 bert Spencer, to account mechanically (by the necessary 

 action of pressures and strains on a frequently flexed elon- 

 gated cylindrical body) for the simultaneous existence of 

 a segmented backbone and a non-segmented skull. Finally, 

 a flood of ridicule and sarcasm was poured on the vertebrate 

 theory of the skull, and the doctrine of archetypal ideas was 

 supposed to be once for all disposed of by means of the hypo- 

 thesis of evolution. Mr. Darwin's Natural Selection was 

 lauded as having given the coup de grace to such fancies; 

 and, lastly, appeared ' Pangenesis,' to slay the slain, and to 

 make fortuitous compounds of atoms occupy the vacant 

 thrones of the deposed prototypal divine ideas. Evolution 

 seemed to so many persons to have this destructive effect 

 because by and through it similarities existing between the 

 parts of different animals came to be represented as exclu- 



