214 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [LECT. IX. 



visible, must have the skill and patience of " the lady 

 of Shallot." Moreover, all this patient skill is of no 

 avail, if there be no interpreting, and even prophesying 

 power in the mind ; an embryologist should be a 

 Seer. 



Now, what will he learn ? First of all, he will learn 

 humility that is the first lesson : "I will say to the 

 worm, Thou art my mother and my sister ;" this, one of 

 the lowlier of the living tribes, is half-way up between 

 Man and his protozoic ancestors. The labour of the em- 

 bryologist may be likened to that of a scholar who finds 

 his work at one time in ransacking a huge Bibliotheca, 

 and at another in scanning the pages of a delightful 

 abstract of a huge folio, where the gist and essence of 

 the subject is put as in a nutshell. 



The whole organic kingdom is the Bibliotheca ; Man 

 is the consummate abstract ; he " seals up the sum," 

 being, in his perfection, full of beauty, if not always " full 

 of wisdom." Man may be said to be an excellent manual 

 on the teleology the final purpose of creation. 



If the body of man be considered as the vehicle of his 

 mind, a ship which carries him, but of which he is the 

 governor or pilot ; then of that ship or ark it may truly 

 be said, a great while was it in building, a far longer 

 time than it took to construct the lesser and meaner kinds 

 of craft mere boats as compared with the nobler vessel. 

 Such a vessel is the last result of the working of the 

 morphological force, and may be compared to that ship 



