EMBRYOTIC REPRESENTATIONS. 



255 



convey the doctrine of the epigenesis of animals, as M. 

 Serres calls it, as an illustration of my subject, consider- 

 ing myself entitled to do so by the position which it has 

 attained in the world. It is, of course, unfortunate for 

 this, as it is for many other doctrines, that it should have 

 an opponent ; but this circumstance is fortunately, on the 

 other hand, no adequate ground of condemnation in the 

 judgment of third parties. I leave, then, the general tenor 

 of this .portion of my reviewer's objections, with the re- 

 mark that, for the one authority which he has called into 

 court, it would be easy to summon many as good on the 

 other side ; for instance, Harvey, Grew, Lister, and 

 Meckel. Our critic's own favorite authority — Mr. Owen 

 — would give good evidence ; see his Letters on the In- 

 vertebrated Animals, where he says that man's embryotic 

 metamorphosis would not be less striking than those of 

 the butterfly, if subjected like them to observation — and 

 then adds, that the human embryo is first vermiform, 

 next stamped with the characters of the apodal fish, 

 afterwards indicative of the enaliosaur, and so forth. 

 There is another most respectable English physiologist — 

 Dr. Roget — who, in his Bridgewater Treatise, explicitly 

 says, " that the animals which occupy the highest sta- 

 tions in each series possess, at the commencement of 

 their existence, forms exhibiting a marked resemblance 

 to those presented in the permanent condition of the 

 lowest animals of the same series ; and that during the 

 progress of their development they assume in succession 

 the characters of each tribe, corresponding to their con- 

 secutive order in the ascending chain." It is to what 

 has been thus spoken of by such excellent men — what 

 was, I believe, first hinted at by Harvey, and afterwards 

 shadowed forth by John Hunter — that this writer applies 

 the appellation of " a monstrous scheme, from first to 

 last nothing but a pile of wildly gratuitous hypotheses." 



This reviewer and others have been eager to point out 

 that " no anatomist has observed the shadow of any 

 change assimilating the nascent embryo to any of the 

 radiata, mollusca, or articulata. Thus are three whole 

 classes [divisions] of the animal kingdom passed over 

 without any corresponding foetal type, and in defiance of 

 the law of development." The writer here states what 

 is not true, if any faith is to be placed in one of the first 

 tu+horities of the age, and one upon which he himself 



