214 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [Lbct. IX. 



visible, must have the skill and patience of " the lady 

 of Shallot." Moreover, aU. this patient skill is of no 

 avail, if there be no interpreting, and even prophesying 

 power in the mind ; an embryologist should be a 

 Seer. 



Now, what will he learn ? First of all, he will learn 

 humility — that is the first lesson : "I will say to the 

 worm. Thou art my mother and my sister ;" this, one of 

 the lowlier of the living tribes, is half-way up between 

 Man and his protozoic ancestors. The labour of the em- 

 bryologist may be likened to that of a scholar who finds 

 his work at one time in ransacking a huge Bibliotheca, 

 and at another in scanning the pages of a delightful 

 abstract of a huge folio, where the gist and essence of 

 the subject is put as in a nutshell. 



The whole organic kingdom is the Bibliotheca ; Man 

 is the consummate abstract ; he " seals up the sum," 

 being, in his perfection, full of beauty, if not always " full 

 of wisdom." Man may be said to be an excellent manual 

 on the teleology — the final purpose — of creation. 



If the body of man be considered as the vehicle of his 

 mind, a ship which carries him, biit of which he is the 

 governor or pilot ; then of that ship or ark it may truly 

 be said, a great while was it in building, — a far longer 

 time than it took to construct the lesser and meaner kinds 

 of craft — mere boats as compared with the nobler vessel. 

 Such a vessel is the last result of the working of the 

 morphological force, and may be compared to that ship 



