EMBRYOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION. 317 



respondences may be traced. The resemblance 

 of an adult Skate, especially in the configuration 

 of the face, the form of the mouth, the position 

 of the nostrils, the arrangement of the gills, to 

 some of the earlier conditions in the growth of 

 the young Mammal, not excepting the human 

 family, is equally striking. No one can fail to be 

 impressed with this resemblance who compares 

 the head of an embryo quadruped, looking at it 

 m front face, with the adult Skate.* 



Indeed, modern Embryology leads at once to 

 the consideration of the most occult problem, as 

 to the origin of animals, suggested by these com- 

 parisons. What do these resemblances mean, 

 from some of which we shrink as unnatural and 

 even revolting ? If we put a material interpre- 

 tation upon them, and believe that even Man 

 himself has been gradually developed out of a 

 Fish, they are repugnant to our better nature. 

 But looked at in their intellectual significance, 

 they truly reveal the unity of the organic con- 

 ception of which Man himself is a part, and mark 

 not only the incipient steps in its manifestation, 

 but also, with equal distinctness, every phase in 

 its gradual realization. They mean that when 

 the first Fish was called into existence, the Ver- 



* Let any one who doubts the truth of this statement as re- 

 gards the human embryo compare the figures of the latter, pub- 

 liihed by Ecker, in the Icones Physiologicce, with any adult Skate. 



