444 ; 
NATURE 
[ Sept. 29, 1870 
treat men of science. It runs thus :—‘‘If you argue from simi- 
larity of customs and ceremonies to identity of origin of two 
tribes under comparison, you must first show that these 
customs are not such as would naturally tend to the amelio- 
ration of the conditions of the inhabitants in the two countries 
under consideration, and would probably therefore, or can 
naturally suggest themselves to each of the races in question, Or 
there may be customs founded on innate folly and stupidity, and 
thus, for your argument to be valid, you must show that of two 
peoples widely separated, each cannot by any chance come into 
its own country to adopt the like foolish and stupid customs. 
For whilst two wise heads are to make out, each independently 
of the other and contemporaneously, a wise discovery or invention, 
itis much more likely in the calculation of chances, and con- 
sidering the much greater number of fools and blockheads 
(‘Thoren und Dummkopfen’) that in two countries widely apart, 
closely similar follies should be simultaneously invented. And 
then, if the inventing fool happens to be a man of influence and 
consideration, which is, by the way, an exceedingly frequent 
coincidence, oth the nations are likely to adopt the same 
foolish practice, and the historian and antiquarian after the lapse 
of some centuries, is likely to draw from this coincidence the con- 
clusion that the two nations both sprang from the same stock.” 
Judge and speculate for yourselves how the spirit which breathes 
in this passage was excited, but note its scientific value too. We 
must not forget that it is possible, in thought, at least, to dis- 
sociate the psychological unity of man from his specific identity 
even ; and that as regards identity of race, it is only reasonable 
to expect that when similar needs are pressing, similar means 
for meeting them are not unlikely to be devised independently by 
members of two tribes who have for ages been separated from 
their original stocks. The question to be asked is, does the con- 
trivance about which we are speculating, combine or does it not 
combine in itself so large a number of converging adaptations, as to 
render itupon the calculation of chances, unlikely thatit should have 
been independently invented? Yet this very obvious principle 
has been neglected, or Lindenschmidt would not have found it 
necessary to say, that by laying too much stress upon certain 
points of national identity in the stones used for the formation of 
cromlechs or dolmens, the Hiinenvolk might be made out to have 
chosen to settle only in those parts of Germany where erratic 
blocks of granite or other such large stones covld be found! 
(Archiy fiir Anthropologie, iii. p. 115, 1868.) 
Sir John Lubbock’s recently published work on ‘‘ The Origin of 
Civilisation,” may, I anticipate, cause the history and genealogy 
of manners and customs to enter largely into the composition of 
our lists of papers. There is no need for me, as the author of 
the book is here himself to speak, as announced, for himself, to 
occupy your time in recommending his work; but I may be 
allowed to say that the utility of such pursuits as those which 
Sir John Lubbock’s book treats of, receives some little illustration 
from the fact that, as we learn from him and from Mr, Tylor, the 
human mind blunders and errs and deceives itself in these subjects 
in just the same way as it does in the kindred, though more im- 
mediately arising, pressing and important matters of social and 
political life. In these latter spheres of observation we are apt 
occasionally to mistake one of those intermittent reactions of 
opinion, produced as eddies are produced in a river, by the deposit 
of sand and mud at angles in its onward course, for a deliberate 
giving up of the principles upon which all previous progress has 
been dependent. The straws which float upon the surface of 
a backwater may be taken as proofs that the river is about to 
flow upwards, and a feeble oarsman in a light boat 
may be deceived for somemoments by the backward drifting 
of his small craft. Now an analogous blunder is often made in 
matters of purely historical interest ; and we may do well to learn 
from the experience thus cheaply earned. ‘‘The history of the 
human race has,” says Sir J. Lubbock, p. 322, 2. ¢., ‘I feel satis- 
fied, on the whole been one of progress ; I do not of course mean 
to say that every race is necessarily advancing ; on the contrary, 
most of the lower are almost stationary,” but Sir John regards 
these as exceptional instances, and points out that if the past 
history of man had been one of deterioration, we have but a 
groundless expectation of future improvement, whilst on the 
other, if the past has been one of progress, we may fairly hope 
that the future will be so also. 
Mr. Tylor’s words are equally to the purpose, though as 
forming the end of a chapter merely, and that at the end of the 
book, they are less enthusiastic in tone. (P. 193, Tylor, ‘‘ Early 
History of Mankind.”) They run thus— 
“To judge from experience, it wouldseem that the world, when 
it has once got afirmer grasp of new knowledge or anew art, is 
very loath to lose it altogether, especially when it relates to 
matters important to man in general, for the conduct of his daily 
life, and the satisfaction of his daily wants, things that come home 
to men’s ‘business and bosoms.’ An inspection of the geo- 
graphical distribution of art and knowledge among mankind seems 
to give some grounds for the belief that the history of the lower 
races, as of the higher, is not the history of a course of degene- 
ration or even of equal oscillations to and fro, but of a move- 
ment, which, in spite of frequent stops and relapses, has on the 
whole been forward ; that there has been from age to age a 
growth in man’s power over nature, which no degrading influ- 
ences have been able permanently to check.” 
I must not trespass into the province of the Botanist, but I 
should be glad to say that no easier method of learning how the 
natural history sciences can be made to bear upon the history of 
man, as a whole, can be devised than that furnished by the 
perusal of such memoirs as those of Unger’s upon the plants 
used for food by man. ‘The very heading and title of the paper 
I am specially referring to appears to me to have an ambignity 
about it which, in itself, is nota little instructive. In that title, 
“Botanische Streifziige auf dem Gebiete der Cultur-Geschichte,” - 
the latter word may be taken, I imagine, etymologically at 
least, to refer either to culture proper or to agriculture. At any 
rate, the paper itself may be read in the Sitzungsberichte of the 
Vienna Academy for 1857; it has, I suppose, superseded the 
interesting chapters in Link’s ‘‘ Urwelt und Alterthum,” of date 
1821 ; and it is not unlikely, I apprehend, to be itself, in its 
turn, superseded also. 
Coming, in the third place, to Zoology, I suppose I 
shall be justified in saying that the largest issue which has 
been raised in the current year, an issue for the examination 
of the data for deciding which the two months of July and 
August which are just past, may have furnished persons now 
present with opportunities, is the question of the kinship of the 
Ascidians to the Vertebrata. There is or was nothing better 
established till the appearance of Kowalewsky’s paper, now 
about four years ago, than the existence of a wide gulph between 
the two great divisions of the animal kingdom, the Vertebrata 
and the Invertebrata; nothing could be more revolutionary than 
the views which would obviously rise out of his facts, and within 
the present year these facts have been abundantly confirmed by 
Prof. Kupfer, whose very clearly written and beautifully illus- 
trated paper has just appeared in the current numberof Schultze’s 
“ Archiv fiir Microscopische Anatomie.” Kupfer’s researches 
have been carried on upon Ascidia canina, but they more than 
confirm the accuracy of what Kowalewsky had stated to take 
place in Ascidia mammillata, and which may besummed up briefly 
thus: In the larval Ascidian we have in its caudal appendages 
an axis skeleton clearly analogous, if not essentiallly homologous, 
to the chorda dorsalis of the vertebrate embryo, as consisting like 
it of rows ofinternally-placed cells, and giving insertion by its sheath 
to muscles. We have further the nervous system and the digestive 
taking up in such embryos much the same positions relatively to 
each other, and to this molluscan chorda dorsalis, that are taken up 
by the confessedly homologous system in the Vertebrata ; we have 
the nervous system originating in the same fashion and closing 
up like the vertebrate myelen cephalon out of the early form of 
a lamellar furrow into that of a closed tube; we have finally 
the respiratory and digestive inlets holding the vertebrate rela- 
tionship of continuity with, instead of the invertebrate of dislo- 
cation and separation from each other. Such are the facts; but 
I am not convinced that they will bear the interpretation that 
has been put upon them ; though I must say the possession of 
this chorda dorsalis by the active locomotor larva of the Ascidian 
which one day settles down into such immobility, lends not a little 
probability to Mr. Herbert Spencer's view of the genesis of the seg- 
mented vertebral column in animals undoubtedly vertebrate. But 
onthis view I should not be inconsistent with myself, inasmuch as, 
to waive other considerations, the chorda dorsalis in each case 
would be considered as an adaptive or teleological modification, 
not a sign of morphological kinship. Much perplexity may or 
must arise here, and whilst entertaining these views, I felt my- 
self bound to examine myself strictly to find whether in not” 
taking them up, I might not be giving way to that reactionary 
reluctance to accept new ideas which advancing years so fre- 
quently bring with them ; but a recent paper, by Lacaze Duthiers, 
published in the Comptes Rendus for May 30, 1870, and trans- 
lated in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for July, 
