106 EXPLANATIONS. 



of third parties. I leave, then, the general tenor 

 of this portion of my reviewer's objections, with the 

 remark, that for the one authority which he has 

 called into court, it would be easy to summon 

 many as good on the other side ; for instance, 

 Harvey, Grew, Lister, and Meckel. Our critic's 

 own favourite authority — Mr. Owen — would give 

 good evidence : see his Lectures on the Invertehrated 

 Animals, where he says that man's embryotic me- 

 tamorphoses would not be less striking than those 

 of the butterfly, if subjected like them to observa- 

 tion — and then adds, that the human embryo is first 

 vermiform, next stamped with the characters of 

 the apodal fish, afterwards indicative of the enali- 

 osaur, and so forth. There is another most res- 

 pectable English physiologist — Dr. Roget — who, 

 in his Bridgewater Treatise, explicitly says, " that 

 the animals which occupy the highest stations in 

 each series possess, at the commencement of 

 their existence, forms exhibiting a marked resem- 

 hlance to those presented in the permanent con- 

 dition of the lowest animals of the same series ; 

 and that, during the progress of their development, 

 they assume in succession the characters of each 

 tribe, corresponding to their consecutive order in 

 the ascending chain." It is to what has been thus 



