i.] DARWINISM VERIFIED. 23 



naturalists have found it so difficult to classify satis- 

 factorily those lower organisms which Cuvier roughly 

 grouped together as radiata. Parallel phenomena 

 recur as we reach the confines of the animal and 

 vegetal kingdoms and meet with numbers of organ- 

 isms which there is as much reason for assigning to 

 the one kingdom as to the other. All this com- 

 plicated arrangement of organisms in groups within 

 groups, resembling each other at the bottom of the 

 scale, and differing most widely at the top, is just 

 what is presupposed by the Darwinian theory of 

 " descent with modification," and on any other theory 

 it appears to be totally inexplicable. 



Precisely similar testimony as to gradual diver- 

 gence is found in the facts of embryology and mor- 

 phology. It is a familiar fact that the germs of all 

 organisms are like each other, and are, moreover, 

 very like such lowest forms of life as the amoeba and 

 protococcus. But as a germ develops it becomes 

 specialized and defined, first as to its sub-kingdom, 

 then as to its class, order, family, genus, species, and 

 variety. The germ-cell of a mandril is at first indis- 

 tinguishable from that of a snail or lobster. The 

 foetal ape arising therefrom is at first definable as a 

 vertebrate, but not as a mammal ; on the other hand, 

 it circulates its blood through a system of gills, and 



