Dc . 30, 1880] 



NATURE 



family. He describes the land about the villages as "finely 

 cultivated, being laid out in sugar-canes, plantations, 

 yams, and other roots, and watered by little rills con- 

 ducted by art from the main stream, whose source was in 

 the hills. . . . Some roots were baking on a fire in an 

 earthern jar which would have held si.x or eight gallons ; 

 nor did we doubt its being their own manufacture." And 

 further on : " The plantations were laid out out with great 

 judgment, and cultivated with much labour." The re- 

 ference to earthenware is curious, because the Polyne- 

 sians are generally supposed to be ignorant of the potter's 

 art. But a taste for art in general, and especially for 

 decoration, is one of the most distinguishing features of 

 the Papuans. Their arms, idols, houses, boats, and other 

 objects are often adorned with very tasteful and elaborate 

 designs, and some of their tatooing presents extremely 

 elegant patterns. They have domesticated the pig, dog, 

 and poultry, and they cultivate the yam, sweet potato, 

 banana, sugar-cane, taro, bread-fruit, and mango. 

 Amongst their arms, besides the spear and bow, are the 

 bamboo blowpipe, and flint knives and axes like those of 

 the neolithic age in Europe. Cannibalism seems to be 

 extremely rare in the West and in New Guinea, but until 

 suppressed was universal in New Zealand and Fiji, and 

 is still prevalent in New Britain and many other parts of 

 Melanesia. From this division of the family it seems to 

 have passed to the brown Polynesians, many of whom 

 ■were formerly addicted to the practice. It reached its 

 climax in Fiji when, shortly before the annexation of 

 these islands to Great Britain, a whole tribe was con- 

 demned to be roasted alive and eaten. .As they were too 

 numerous to be consumed at one meal, it was arranged 

 that at the annual taro harvest one family should be baked 

 and eaten with that esculent, and the arrangement was 

 scrupulously carried out until the annexation seasonably 

 intervened to save a remnant of the tribe {Dc Rici). 



A. H. Keane 

 (/"o be con/iitued.) 



PROF. HUXLEY ON EVOLUTION 



A T the meeting of the Zoological Society on December 



■'*■ 14, among the papers read was one by Prof. Huxley on 



the application of the laws of evolution to the arrangement 



of the vertebrata, and more particularly of the mammalia. 



We take the following report of the paper from the 



Times : — 



Prof. Huxley began by saying: — There is evidence, the 

 value of which has not been disputed, and which, in my 

 judgment, amounts to proof, that, between the commence- 

 ment of the Tertiary epoch and the present time, the group 

 of the EquidK has been represented by a series of forms, 

 of which the oldest is that which departs lea^t from the 

 general type of structure of the higher mammalia, while 

 the latest is that which most widely differs from that type. 

 In fact, the earliest known equine animal possesses four 

 complete sub-equal digits on the fore-foot, three on the 

 hind-foot ; the ulna is complete and distinct from the 

 radius ; the fibula is complete and distinct from the tibia; 

 there are forty-four teeth, the full number of canines 

 being present, and the cheek-teeth having short crowns 

 with simple patterns and early-formed roots. The latest, 

 on the other hand, has only one complete digit on each 

 foot, the rest being represented by rudiments ; the ulna is 

 reduced and partially ankylosed with the radius ; the fibula 

 is still more reduced and partially ankylosed with the tibia ; 

 the canine teeth are partially or completely suppressed in 

 the females ; the first cheek-teeth usually remain un- 

 developed, and when they appear are very small ; the 

 other cheek-teeth have long crowns, with highly com- 

 plicated patterns and late-formed roots. The EquidiU of 

 intermediate ages exhibit intermediate characters. With 

 respect to the interpretation of these facts, t*o hypotheses, 

 and only two, appear to be imaginable. The one assumes 



that these successive fjrms of equine animals have come 

 into existence independently of one another. The other 

 assumes that they are the result of the gradual modifi- 

 cation undergone by the successive members of a 

 continuous line of ancestry. As I am not aware that 

 any zoologist maintains the first hypothesis, I do 

 not feel called upon to discuss it. The adoption 

 of the second, however, is equivalent to the accept- 

 ance of the doctrine of evolution so far as horses 

 are concerned, and, in the absence of evidence to 

 the contrary, I shall suppose that it is accepted. 



Since the commencement of the Eocene epoch, the ani- 

 mals which constitute the family of the Equida: have under- 

 gone processes of modification of three kinds : ( i ) there has 

 been an excess of development of one part of the oldest 

 form over another ; (2) certain parts have undergone 

 complete or partial suppression ; (3) parts originally dis- 

 tinct have coalesced. Employing the term " law " simply 

 in the sense of a general statement of facts ascertained by 

 observation, I shall speak of these three processes by 

 which the Eohippus form has passed into Equus as the 

 expression of a three-fold law of evolution. It is of pro- 

 found interest to remark that this law, or generalised 

 statement of the nature of the ancestral evolution of the 

 horse, is precisely the same as that which formulates the 

 process of individual development in animals generally, 

 from the period at which the broad characters of the 

 group to which an animal belongs are discernible onwards. 

 After a mammalian embryo, for example, has taken on its 

 general mammalian characters, itsfurther progress towards 

 its special form is effected by the excessive growth of one. 

 part in relation to another, by the arrest or suppression of 

 parts already formed, and by the coalescence of parts 

 primarily distinct. This coincidence of the laws cf 

 ance-stral and individual development, creates a strong 

 confidence in the general validity of the former, and a 

 behef that we may safely employ it in reasoning deduc- 

 tively from the known to the unknown. The astronomer 

 who has determined three places of a new planet calcu- 

 lates its place at any epoch, however remote ; and, if the 

 law of evolution is to be depended upon, the zoologist 

 who knows a certain length of the course of that evolution 

 in any given case, may with equal justice reason back- 

 wards to the earlier, but unknown stages. Applying this 

 method to the case of the horse, I do not see that there is 

 any reason to doubt that the Eocene Equidae were pre- 

 ceded by Mesozoic forms, which differed from Eohippus 

 in the same way as Eohippus differs from Equus. And 

 thus we are ultimately led to conceive of a first form of 

 the equine series, which, if the law is of general validity, 

 must need have been provided with five sub-equal digits 

 on each plantigrade foot, with complete, sub-equal ante- 

 brachial and crural bones, with clavicles, and with, at 

 fewest, forty-four teeth, the cheek-teeth having short 

 crowns and simple-ridged or tuberculated patterns. More- 

 over, since March's investigations have shown that the 

 older forms of any given mammalian group have less- 

 developed cerebral hemispheres than the later, there is a 

 primA facie probability that this primordial hippoid had a 

 low form of brain. Further, since the existing horse 

 has a diffuse allantoic phcentation, the primary form 

 could not have presented a higher, and may have pos- 

 sessed a lower, condition of the various modes by which 

 the ftetus derives nourishment from the parent. Such 

 an animal as this, however, wouli find no place in 

 any of our s) stems of classification of the mammalia. It 

 would come nearest to the Lemuroidea and the Insectivora, 

 though the non-prehensile pes would separate it from the 

 former, and the placentation from the latter group. 



A natural classification is one which associates together 

 all those forms which are closely allied, and separates them 

 from the rest. But, whether in the ordinary sense of the 

 word "alliance," or in its purely morphological sense, it 

 is impossible to imagine a group of animals more closely 



