126 Species; or, Darwinism. 



Comparative Anatomy speaks thus: "If any one 

 should be bold enough to assert that a fish, by dint 

 of standing up continually on dry land, would see 

 its scales fall away and change into feathers; or 

 that thus it would become a bird; or if any one 

 tells us that a quadruped, by dint of squeezing 

 itself through narrow ways and stretching itself out 

 while walking, might change into a serpent, he would 

 do nothing else but give proof of the most pro- 

 found ignorance of anatomical science." And 

 again, in his discourse on the Revolutions of the 

 Globe, he instances the dog, which has accompanied 

 man everywhere, has undergone all kinds of modi- 

 fications, has in short been subjected to artificial 

 selection in its fullest sense. Hence the different 

 races of dogs differ in every conceivable way, as 

 much, for instance, in their measurements as one 

 to five; yet, he continues, " in spite of so many and 

 such great differences, the relations of the bones 

 remain the very same, and never does the form of 

 the teeth differ in any point of consequence." 



138. I do not venture to say whether science has 

 improved on these very peremptory conclusions. 

 They seem to be admitted now as much as in 

 Cuvier's time. A walking animal, it is granted, 

 cannot be descended from a climbing one. Vogt, 

 in placing man among the primates, that is, among 

 the apes, declares without hesitation that the lowest 

 class of apes have passed the landmark (the com- 

 from which, according to evolution, 



