224 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [Lect. IX. 



who has infused into the world such a power of production that, 

 when only the millionth part of it comes out into life, the world 

 swarms with creatures to such a degree that war, pestilence, fire, and 

 water cannot prevail against them. That is my God.' " — Eckermann, 

 Conversations with Goethe, translated by Oxenford (year 1831, 

 vol. ii. p. 347). 



General remarks on the unity of structure of the Mammalia as a 

 group, Man included, are apt to evaporate from the memory. I will 

 give an instance of the marvellous conformity of structure between 

 Man and one of the beasts, that came under my own notice, and 

 strongly impressed me, many years ago. 



In the year 1845 or 1846, a large Seal {Phoca vitulind) lost 

 its way by entering the mouth of the WeUand, and was caught 

 at Stamford, in Lincobishire. It was kept as a show for a 

 while, and the descendants of the "holy-day fools" of Shake- 

 spere's time paid their monies to see the monster.i This captive 

 soon died for want of a due supply of fish, and was purchased 

 by me for dissection. The skeleton of it is still to be seen in the 

 Hunterian Museum. Tliis gentle creature, the Seal, is, as every 

 one knows, very fond of music, and looks as though he were one of 

 our own kind, mysteriously bewitched into a fishy shape, as though 

 he liad " suffered a sea-change " wrought upon him by some demon 

 of the deep. His eyes are so soft and tearful, and have such a 

 sorrowful, longing look, that you seem to hear him ask you to break 

 the spell that keeps him bound in his watery prison, his hands and 

 feet tied up, so as to be of no use except as swimming flappers. 



This bewitchment theory, of the cause of the poor Moon-caH's 

 shape, and enforced watery life, is borne out by his structure in the 

 most remarkable manner ; many worse and more absurd scientific 

 theories than that have been hatched in human brains. Now this is 

 what I learned of the conformity of the structure of this creature with 

 that of Man, namely, that it would be possible for an accomplished 

 anatomist to write an accurate account, using somewhat general terms, 

 but naming every muscle, bone, nerve, artery and vein — every sense- 

 organ, and every one of the soft viscera within its body — and that 

 description might be made to serve both for the Seal and for 

 Man. More than this — far more — the same supposed biologist 

 ^ Tempest, Act ii. , Scene 2nil. 



