52 



Origin and Primal Condition of Man. 



depending on surrounding conditions, in part internal. 

 (Mivart, p. 157). It is announced that Prof. Dana will pub- 

 lish a pamphlet in June giving his view of the question. 

 We await his utterance with much interest. 



In considering the origin of species, two lines of argu- 

 ment advanced by the supporters of the theory of natural 

 selection, should be carefully studied. First it is claimed 

 that species run at all points one into another by imper- 

 ceptible gradations, and that recent discoveries show the 

 same fact in the paleontology of plants and animals. No- 

 tura non facit saltum is a maxim insisted on by Darwin. 

 Mivart, however, has very ably shown that many of the 

 forms which were once supposed to unite different species 

 and genera do not do so in reality, giving several instances 

 (p. 122, 3), the aye-aye, once supposed to unite the order of 

 rodents with that of primates, also bats, cetaceans, pteroda- 

 cetyls and amphibians, all of which he asserts are now 

 considered to belong as absolutely to their respective 

 classes and orders, as if no resemblance seemed to ally 

 them to any others. The second argument to observe is 

 that drawn from embryology. The embryo of all higher 

 animals and especially of man passes through the succes- 

 sive states of lower animals at different stages of its growth. 

 This transformation, long since noticed as regards bodily 

 structure, has recently been studied by Maudsley and shown 

 to pertain with equal exactness to the brain, and spinal and 

 nervous system. This is indeed weighty evidence in sup- 

 port of some theory of evolution, but it is equally applica- 

 ble on any other theory than that the one of successive 

 minute variations and the survival of the fittest as held by 

 Darwin. Huxley asserts that the ovum from which all 

 animals grow cannot be distinguished in any particular 

 from the lowest form of life variously called monad, proto- 

 plasm, &c, and this must be considered to point very 

 forcibly to the evolution of species by some form or other. 



