xcviii report — 1877. 



•without at the same time hecoming an evolutionist. There may still be mam- 

 difficulties, some inconsistencies, and much to learn, and there may remain 

 beyond much which we shall never know ; but I cannot conceive any doctrine 

 professing to bring the phenomena of embryonic development within a general 

 law which is not, like the theory of Darwin, consistent with their fundamental 

 identity, their endless variability, their subjugation to varying external in- 

 fluences and conditions, and with the possibility of tho transmission of the 

 vital conditions and properties, with all their variations, from individual to 

 individual, and, in the long lapse of ages, from race to race. 



I regard it, therefore, as no exaggerated representation of the present state 

 of our knowledge to say that the ontogenetic development of the individual 

 in the higher animals repeats in its more general character, and in many 

 of its specific phenomena, the phylogenetic development of the race. If we 

 admit the progressive nature of the changes of development, their simi- 

 larity in different groups, and their common characters in all animals, nay, 

 even in some respects in both plants and animals, we can scarcely refuse 

 to recognize the possibility of continuous derivation in the history of their 

 origin ; and however far we may be, by reason of the imperfection of our 

 knowledge of Palasontology, Comparative Anatomy, and Embryology, from 

 realizing the precise nature of tho chain of connexion by which the actual 

 descent has taken place, still there can be little doubt remaining in the minds 

 of any unprejudiced student of embryology that it is only by the employment 

 of such an hypothesis as that of Evolution that further investigation in these 

 several departments will be promoted, so as to bring us to a fuller compre- 

 hension of the most general law which regulates the adaptation of structure 

 to function in the Universe. 



