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PPtOFESSOE HENKY WEBSTEE PARKEE^ ON 



is long in maturing ; and choice fruits and flowers demand 

 patient culture. The noblest animals are bom the most 

 helpless, and are long in developing, for they have much to 

 develop. Further, the parental instinct correlated with this 

 dependent condition implies some superiority in the species. 

 Lacepede devised a curious scale of eight ranks for birds : 

 first, those that build no nests ; next, those that build rudely ; 

 and so on until, finally, those that form a commuriity-roof. 

 Charles Lucien Bonaparte divided birds into two series — 

 Altrices, that feed their young ; and Prsecoces, that feed 

 themselves from the first. Man, as compared with even 

 tlie creatm-es nearest to him, certainly is unique in long 

 postnatal development, physical and mental. 



11. A principle of great importance is drawn from meta- 

 morphosis in general and embryology in particular, namely, 

 that what is a transition stage in one organism is the last 

 and permanent one in another, which, not progressing, is 

 ranked lower. The fact is found in various branches and 

 classes, and, among batrachians, is familiar to all. Inciden- 

 tally here, it is enough to say that the metamorphosis of the 

 higher anthropoids is well known to be from a more human- 

 like conformation in the young to less in the adult. Yet the 

 adult, considered in the light of marked type, is not a retro- 

 grade foiTQ, but the ideal caricature (in the gorilla the utmost 

 exaggeration of the horribly brutal) to which the simians 

 tend. The adult properly represents the species, which is 

 thus the very antithesis of man, who tends to the precisely 

 opposite pole — the symmetrical, the admirable, the intel- 

 lectual, the godlike. All things considered, the term 



anthropoid " is, even on zoological principles, a crudeness 

 and a jest. 



12. Retrograde metamorphosis proper, along with any 

 degeneration, strikingly illustrated in the life-history of 

 barnacles and the worm-like entomostracans, mostly ac- 

 companies a parasitic or sedentary condition of the adult. 

 Among men, it seems to have followed unfavourable con- 

 ditions, or else some unknown process of variation. The 

 difference between the comparatively brutal features of 

 some degenerate human races and the noble beauty of other 

 races, especially as embodied in the more perfect individuals, 

 only goes to show how high is the ideal physical man above 

 whatever is beastly. 



13. Inferior featm-es of structure are sometimes present in 

 animals of otherv/ise superior grade, and so depreciate rank ; 



