10 



all and passed into a kind of vegetative existence — that might be 

 justifiably regarded as degradation. If it commenced existence 

 with the special and peculiar endowments of a vertebrated animal, 

 and ended in being a mere animated bag of seawater, it would be 

 a degraded animal. If it emerged from the egg a freely moving 

 creature, swimming hither and thither, and earning its own living, 

 and then finished up by burrowing into the tissues of a higher animal 

 and feeding on them, it would have degenerated. In fact, when- 

 ever an animal loses its higher endowments, parting with specially 

 organised limbs or senses, and so seems to have fallen, not merely 

 as an individual in a class, but to have actually sunk into a lower 

 class — there cannot be much question about it. The frog com- 

 mences life as a fish, but developes into something higher than 

 that. How should we regard it if it began as a frog, and ended as 

 a fish ? Other creatures start very similarly with a tadpole stage, 

 but end on a far lower step of the ladder of life. Again, the rats, the 

 lizards, fishes, and insects in caves, possessing but mere rudiments 

 of eyes, or none at all, are undoubtedly the descendants of rats, 

 lizards, fishes, and insects, which possessed fully developed eyes ; 

 surely they illustrate degeneration. And this degeneration you will 

 notice is sometimes, as with these cave animals, a degeneration of 

 the whole species or even genus, and extends through the whole 

 career of the individual ; in other instances which, I shall first 

 illustrate, the gradual descent is traceable in the life of each indi- 

 vidual. 



We will take as our first example an animal that occupies a very 

 prominent place in all works on development, common on some 

 shores, but slighted and passed over by ordinary persons as a thing 

 of no beauty, and to which no interest could be attached. I mean 

 the Ascidians, a tribe of tunicate Molluscs, possessing characters at 

 one period of their life, so peculiar, that some biologists claim them 

 for the vertebrate kingdom. In the Darwinian Theory they are 

 most important, since the author himself tells us we are justified 

 in believing that man is descended from a tadpole-like form closely 

 resembling that of our present Ascidians. 



In outward appearance the Ascidian or Sea Squirt is a r^ugh 

 leathery bag, like a two necked bottle, found fixed on rocks at low 

 water mark. We naturally look upon it as a " low" form of life 

 because it is a fixture, and seems to have no relations with the 

 outer world beyond the satisfying of its hunger with what may 

 chance to flow into its mouth. Yet we are told by naturalists, that 

 it alone, amongst all invertebrate creatures, possesses in early life 

 the four marks which characterize especially the members of the 

 vertebrate kingdom, whilst the action of its heart in propelling the 

 blood alternately to the body and to the aerating apparatus, is 



