178 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



feature of the human embryo, known as branchial 

 clefts and arches. From this superficial like- 

 ness the inference was drawn that our an- 

 cestors were once fishes disporting themselves in 

 the briny deep. The first and largest of the 

 branchial arches in question later forms the oral 

 cavity and the parts belonging to it. Just why 

 this so-called "shark-fin" should evolve thus is 

 a mystery we leave to Haeckel's followers to 

 solve. The one branchial cleft that remains in 

 man forms the external auditory passage. Quite 

 correctly therefore Wasmann writes: 



The pharyngeal arches and clefts in the human embryo bear 

 a superficial likeness to the gills of fishes, and so they have 

 been called branchial arches and clefts, whereas they are really 

 indifferent pharyngeal extroversions in the embryo, supplying 

 the material for other subsequent formations. Can any one 

 seriously regard them as evidence that our forefathers were 

 once fish, and that the embryonic development "recapitulates" 

 this former fish stage ? * 



The thoughtful reader, as the writer adds, can- 

 not fail to see what a vast difference there is be- 

 tween fanciful interpretations and really scientific 

 attempts to account for the various phenomena of 

 nature. Materialistic evolution is purely a myth 

 and a nightmare. "I remember once hearing a 

 rather well-known professor of biology suggest," 

 Dr. James J. Walsh remarks in America, "that 

 the reason why little boys like to sit down and 

 wiggle their toes in the mud along the beach, is 



"'Modern Biology," p. 454. 



