86 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



arctic regions, and a thousand varieties of animals can 

 never leave the tropics. Man is the most flexible of 

 creatures, so far as the vicissitudes of climate are 

 concerned, yet he has struggled in vain to reach the 

 poles. 



The lowest real brains appear in fishes ; and they 

 consist of four or five pairs of well defined masses of 

 neural matter crowded into a bony skull. Reaching 

 from the most posterior of these ganglia there extends 

 along the back and toward the tail a dorsal cord run- 

 ning in a canal inclosed by the vertebral chain of 

 bones. The skull ganglia constitute the encephalon 

 or brain, and some of them are capable of very high 

 range of development. The cerebral ganglia of man 

 attain a weight of several pounds. Between the low- 

 est encephalon and the highest there is more differ- 

 ence than between the diminutive brains of a tiny fish 

 and the largest ganglia of a water-beetle in the same 

 pool. The beetle is brainless, to be sure, but quite 

 intelligent; the stupid little fish can boast of possess- 

 ing brains, yet of less mental capacity than many 

 insects. It is a fact, too, that fishes and reptiles are 

 not capable of being far advanced by experience and 

 education. The shark family possesses comparatively 

 large brains and considerable intelligence. 



Hseckel, in his Evolution of Man, page 251, says : 

 " The vertebrates have no connection with the great 

 group of articulated animals (arthropoda) ; but to the 

 latter belong not only the crabs, but also the spiders 

 and insects, which last form a single class, comprising 

 probably as many, if not more, distinct species than 

 all the other classes of animals together. Unfor- 

 tunately, we lose by this the relationship which 

 might otherwise connect us with termites, ants, bees, 



