THE HUMAN FORM. 4^ 



to question: At what place and How? Did 

 the great transition occur at a single point 

 in a single family and possibly in a single 

 species of animals? Or did the Mammal 

 spring forth cotemporaneously over a vast 

 area? The greater likelihood is that it, hav- 

 ing been formed under favorable conditions, 

 spread from a common center. The recent 

 excavations of the Fayum in Egypt, indicate 

 that it must have been at a very early period, 

 a prolific seat of Mammalian life, possibly 

 its original breeding source. At any rate 

 our muscles, our organs and their mutual re- 

 lations were formed as they now are in those 

 transformed vertebrates when thev became 



V 



suck-giving and sucklings a most weighty 

 node of life's evolution, since the mother now 

 begins to appear, though the female had long 

 existed already. Another important node 



* 



may be mentioned in the development of 

 animals: the placentata, those which have 

 evolved a placenta (afterbirth) in connec- 

 tion with gestation. Again this new organ 

 belongs to the mother for the reproduction 

 of the higher order of animals. That is, the 

 evolution of the completer organs of ma- 

 ternity seems to be connected with the ad- 

 vance of the animal world toward man, even 

 if the placenta (or its first germ) occurs 

 sporadically in some Invertebrates, The 



