THE PROBLEM: THE MODE OF ITS SOLVTION 19 



their place, have long since disappeared and left no 

 trace nor sign. We have generally no conception at 

 all of the amount of extermination and degeneration 

 which have taken place in past ages. 



I grant frankly that I do not believe that the forms 

 which I have selected represent exactly the ancestors 

 of man. They have all been more or less modified. I 

 claim only that in the balance and relative develop- 

 ment of their organic systems — muscular, digestive, ner- 

 vous, etc. — they give us a very fair idea of what our 

 ancestor at each stage must have been. But it is on 

 this balance and relative development of the different 

 systems, that is, whether an animal is more reproduc- 

 tive, digestive, or nervous, that my argument will in 

 the main be based. 



But if the older ancestors have so generally dis- 

 appeared, and their surviving relatives have been so 

 greatly modified, how can we make even a shrewd 

 guess at the ancestry of higher forms ? The genealogy 

 of the animal kingdom has been really the study of 

 centuries, although the earlier zoologists did not know 

 that this was to be the result of their labors. The 

 first work of the naturalist was necessarily to classify 

 the plants and animals which he found, and catalogue 

 and tabulate them so that they might be easily recog- 

 nized, and that later discovered forms might readily find 

 a place in the system. Hypotheses and theories were 

 looked upon with suspicion. " Even Linnaeus," says 

 Romanes, " was express in his limitations of true scien- 

 tific work in natural history to the collecting and ar- 

 ranging of species of plants and animals." The ques- 

 tion, " What is it ? " came first ; then, " How did it come 

 to be what it is ? " We are just awakening to the ques- 



