ORGANIC EVOLUTION OF MAN 187 



of muscles which some of the lower animals 

 employ to shake flies off^ their skin. He will find 

 in the dangerous little death-trap known as the 

 "appendix" a relic of an organ which was useful 

 to his vegetarian ancestors. He will find attached 

 to his spine the remnant of a tail, and occasion- 

 ally the tail is something more than rudim^entary, 

 and may be nearly a foot in length. Granville 

 Harrison removed from a child such a tail, which 

 moved briskly when the child cried or was excited, 

 and was drawn up when at rest. Even the 

 arrangement of the hairs of his body will " give 

 him away." 



And biologists have not been content with such 

 evidence in the man : they have found evidence 

 even more startling in the ovum and the embryo. 

 They point out that man is not only descended 

 from a little bit of protoplasm, but that the ovum 

 from which he is developed is just such a little bit 

 of protoplasm. They point out, further, the very 

 remarkable, the astounding fact that the embryo 

 in course of its development recapitulates part of 

 the biography of the race, that — to use the technical 

 expression — " Ontogeny is a recapitulation of 

 phylogeny." This fact is stated by Haeckel as 

 follows : — 



" The series of forms through which the indi- 

 vidual organism passes during its development 



