94 FACTS AND FANCIES 



decayed baron, or if possible from a celebrated 

 prince, rather than from an unknown humble 

 peasant, so they prefer seeing the progenitor 

 of the human race in an Adam degraded by 

 the fall, rather than in an ape capable of higher 

 development and progress. It is a matter of 

 taste, and such genealogical preferences do 

 not, therefore, admit of discussion. It is more 

 to my individual taste to be the more highly- 

 developed descendant of an ape, who in the 

 struggle for existence had developed pro- 

 gressively from lower mammals as they from 

 still lower vertebrates, than the degraded de- 

 scendant of an Adam, Godlike but debased 

 by the fall, who was formed from a clod of 

 earth, and of an Eve created from a rib of 

 Adam. As regards the celebrated *rib,' I must 

 here expressly add, as a supplement to the 

 history of the development of the skeleton, 

 that the number of ribs is the same in man 

 and in woman.* In the latter as well as in 

 the former the ribs originate from the skin- 

 fibrous layer, and are to be regarded phyloge- 

 netically as lower or ventral vertebra;." f 



* It was scarcely necessary to refer to this childish objection unless 

 the individual skeleton of Adam had been in question, 

 f Rather, vertebral arches." 



