14 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [Lect. I. 



it is among the latter, wliose young are feeble at the time 

 of hatching, that the most tender care is taken of the 

 family. The same holds good amongst mammals, as we 

 all know ; yet the young one, when born in a tender state, 

 has fairly the form of its parents ; it does not shock them 

 by its larval ugliness ; and the first human mother on 

 record, seeing her first-born son, exclaims — " I have 

 gotten a 3fan from the Lord." 



All these things are so familiar to us that I fear 

 you will wonder why I speak of them ; but if you 

 reflect upon the ivay in which they came about, and 

 the time they took to get perfected, you will see what I 

 am aiming at. Mentally, in imagination, I have been 

 tarrying Nature's leisure, whilst, during untold ages, 

 she has wrouoiit all these wonders. 



If anyone will consider the great uniformity, both in 

 size and shape, of all mammalian embryos and germs, 

 he will see that the marvel of evolution is always going 

 on in a thousand types, here, in the highest class, at the 

 very top and crown of creation. That which is now, is 

 like that which has been ; the mere shortness or length 

 of time during which the various processes of growth and 

 development take place is a non-essential matter. The 

 embryo of a mammal at the stage which represents a gill- 

 bearing vertebrate, in all cases that I have examined, 

 ranges from one-third of an inch to an inch in length ; 

 the former size belongs to the smaller kinds, the latter 

 to the larger. 



