DESCENT OF MAN FEOM SOME LOWER FORM. 129 



The inquirer would next come to the important point 

 whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead 

 to occasional severe s truggles for exis tence ; and ^conse- 

 quently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, 

 being preserved, and inj iirious ones eliminatecn DoT;he 

 races^r species of men^wEicEevOT~term may be applied, 

 encroach on and replace one another;" so that some finally 

 become extinct ? We shall see that all these questions , as 

 indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be 

 ans wered in the aflSrmative, in the_Bame. manner jis^ wife 

 the lower an iraals. 



POINTS OF COEEBSPONDEKCB BETWEEN MAN AND THE 

 OTHER ANIMALS. 



The Descent I* is notorious that man is coBB t£flcted,Qg. 

 of Man, th e same general type q i; jaodfil.as otheumam- 

 ^^^ ' mals. All the bones in his skeleton can be 



compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or 

 seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and 

 internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all 

 the organs, fol lows the same law^T^own by MuxTeyah J 

 other anatomists . Bischofl, who is a hostile witness, ad- 

 mits that every chief fissure and fold in the brain of man 

 has its analogy in that of the orang ; but he adds that at 

 no period of development do their brains perfectly agree ; 

 nor could perfect agreement be expected, for otherwise 

 their mental powers would have been the same. 



Man is liable to receive from the lower animals, and 

 to communicate to them, certain diseases, as hydropho- 

 bia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc. ; 

 and this fact proves the close similarity of their tissues 

 and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far 

 more plainly than does their comparison under the best 



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