126 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. LECT. V. 



deductions from facts, and for putting those deductions 

 into such a form that other minds can receive and 

 appreciate them, is far beyond anything I can boast 

 of. The author I refer to is Professor Huxley, and 

 the paper entitled "An Application of the Laws of 

 Evolution to the Arrangement of the Vertebrata, and 

 more particularly of the Mammalia," has been repeatedly 

 referred to in these Lectures ; I have had much help 

 from him, and from other fellow-workers. But I cannot 

 pass unnoticed Dr Dobson's valuable work on the 

 Anatomy of the Insectivora, nor Professor Flower's im- 

 portant papers and works on the Mammalia generally. 

 Although I shall refer merely to what can be seen in the 

 skull and face, I have not been unmindful of the rest 

 of the organisation of these creatures ; but my views 

 are mainly based on what can be seen in the head. 

 Now the types treated of in my last lecture the 

 Edentata as I showed, lead nowhere ; they end in 

 themselves ; not so the Insectivora. In them we evi- 

 dently have the modified and dwarfed representatives of 

 the original placental mammals, or Eutheria. These 

 lowly forms, although small and inconspicuous, yet 

 yield a rich harvest to the biologist, for they are the 

 somewhat altered, living patterns, of the forms that 

 did abound in the middle, and even in the early, 

 Tertiary epoch. In the Secondary rocks their exist- 

 ence is doubtful, as the bony remains of the earliest 

 Insectivora would be scarcely distinguishable from 



