td 
EMBRYOLOGY AND CLASSIFICATION. 317 
respondences may be traced. The resemblance 
of an adult Skate, especially in the configuration 
of the face, the form of the mouth, the position 
of the nostrils, the arrangement of the gills, to 
some of the earlier conditions in the growth of 
the young Mammal, not excepting the human 
family, is equally striking. No one can fail to be 
impressed with this resemblance who compares 
the head of an embryo quadruped, looking at it 
in front face, with the adult Skate.* 
Indeed, modern Embryology leads at once to 
the consideration of the most occult problem, as 
to the origin of animals, suggested by these com- 
parisons. What do these resemblances mean, 
from some of which we shrink as unnatural and 
even revolting ? If we put a material interpre- 
tation upon them, and believe that even Man 
himself has been gradually developed out of a 
Fish, they are repugnant to our better nature. 
But looked at in their intellectual. significance, 
they truly reveal the unity of the organic con- 
ception of which Man himself is a part, and mark 
not only the incipient steps in its manifestation, 
but also, with equal distinctness, every phase in 
its gradual realization. They mean that when 
the first Fish was called into existence, the Ver- 
* Let any one who doubts the truth of this statement as re- 
gards the human embryo compare the figures of the latter, pub- 
lished by Ecker, in the cones Physiologicee, with any adult Skate. 
