Sir John Lubbock’s Address. 271 
tion, and are based more and more on the theory of descent. 
Biologists endeavor to arrange animals on what is called the 
“natural system.” Noone now places whales among tish, bats’ 
among birds, or shrews with mice, notwithstanding their ex- 
ternal similarity ; and Darwin maintained that ‘community of 
descent was the hidden bond which naturalists had been uncon- 
sciously seeking.” How else, indeed, can we explain the fact 
that the framework of bones is so similar in the arm of a man, 
the wing of a bat, the fore-leg of a horse, and the fin of a por- 
poise—that the neck of a giraffe and that of an elephant con- 
tain the same number of vertebree ? 
ten f 
never cut the gums, the shrivelled and useless wings of some 
beetles, the presence of a series of arteries in the embryos of 
the higher Vertebrata exactly similar to those which suppl 
the gills in fishes, even the spots on the young blackbird, the 
stripes on the lion’s cub; these, and innumerable other facts of 
the same character, appear to be incompatible with the idea 
that each species was specially and independently created ; and 
to prove, on the contrary, that the embryonic stages of species 
show us more or Jess clearly the structure of their ancestors. 
Darwin’s views, however, are still mach misunderstood. I 
believe there are thousands who consider that according to his 
theory a sheep might turn into a cow, or a zebra into a horse. 
No one would more confidently withstand any such hypothesis, 
his view being, of course, not that the one could be changed 
into the other, but that both are descended from a common 
ancestor. 
have answered. Now we see at a glance that the stripes of the 
tiger have reference to its life among jungle-grasses ; the lion is 
sandy, like the desert; while the markings of the leopard re- 
semble spots of sunshine glancing through the leaves. Again, 
Wallace in his charming essays on natural selection has shown 
which, as we know, nests in river-banks. Lower still, among 
Insects, Weismann has taught us that even the markings of 
