16 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part E 
carefully copied from two works of undoubted accu- 
racy . 11 
After the foregoing statements made by such high 
authorities, it would be superfluous on my part to give 
a number of borrowed details, shewing that the embryo 
of man closely resembles that of other mammals. It 
may, however, be added that the human embryo like- 
wise resembles in various points of structure cer- 
tain low forms when adult. For instance, the heart 
at first exists as a simple pulsating vessel ; the excreta 
are voided through a cloacal passage ; and the os 
coccyx projects like a true tail, “extending considerably 
“ beyond the rudimentary legs .” 12 In the embryos of 
all air-breathing vertebrates, certain glands called the cor- 
pora Wolffi ana, correspond with and act like the kidneys 
of mature fishes . 13 Even at a later embryonic period, 
some striking resemblances between man and the lower 
animals may be observed. Bischoff says that the con- 
volutions of the brain in a human foetus at the end of 
the seventh month reach about the same stage of deve- 
lopment as in a baboon when adult . 14 The great toe, as 
Prof. Owen remarks , 15 “ which forms the fulcrum when 
“ standing or walking, is perhaps the most characteristic 
11 The human embryo (upper fig.) is from Ecker, 1 leones Phys.,* 
1851-1859, tab. xxx. fig. 2. This embryo was ten lines in length, so 
that the drawing is much magnified. The embryo of the dog is from 
Bischoff, ‘ Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hunde-Eies,’ 1845, tab. xi. fig. 
42 b. This drawing is five times magnified, the embryo being 25 days 
old. The internal viscera have been omitted, and the uterine appen- 
dages in both drawings removed. I was directed to these figures by 
Prof. Huxley, from whose work, * Man’s Place in Nature,’ the idea of 
giving them was taken. H'ackel has also given analogous drawings in 
his 1 Schopfungsgeschichte.’ 
12 Prof. Wyman in ‘ Proc. of American Acad, of Sciences,’ vol. iv. 
1860, p. 17. 
13 Owen, 1 Anatomy of Vertebrates,’ vol. i. p. 533. 
14 ‘ Die Grosshirnwindungen des Menschen,’ 1868, s. 95. 
15 ‘Anatomy of Vertebrates,’ vol. ii. p. 553. 
