CONCLUDING REMARKS 



IN the course of Phytogeny the body of Man has undergone a 

 series of modifications which still in part find expression in his 

 Ontogeny. There are indications that changes in his organisa- 

 tion are still continuing, and that the Man of the future will be 

 different from the Man of to-day. It is the more necessary to 

 emphasise this, because it has only recently been asserted by one 

 in authority in the anthropological world, that "since the Neolithic 

 Age Man has been a fixed type." 



I willingly admit that nothing is gained by the mere 

 demonstration of " animal likenesses," and that the final and 

 only satisfactory solution of the great riddle of Man must lie in 

 the demonstration of his genealogy and the line of his inheritance. 



Although small and insignificant in their first appearance, 

 structural changes become more and more distinctly marked 

 from generation to generation, and more and more definitely 

 fixed according to the laws of heredity and selection. There 

 exist different degrees of the degenerative process : first an 

 organ begins to degenerate in the adult body, then this 

 degeneration finds expression in the embryo, then the organ 

 in question only occurs in a certain percentage of the in- 

 dividuals as a reversion, and finally even such occasional 

 occurrence ceases, and all trace of the organ is lost. Osborn 

 calls this process of gradual extinction the " long struggle 

 of the destructive power of degeneration." 



Although these changes are so manifold and follow such 

 different directions (take, for example, those of the musculature), 

 one principle lies at the bottom of them all, viz, the endeavour 

 to shake off, as far as possible, all that is unnecessary and 

 superfluous, in order to make room for further development. 

 Weismann very justly remarks : " If Nature were not able to 

 effect the disappearance of superfluous organs the transformation 

 of species would have been well-nigh impossible, for the existing 



