I884.J 
545 
Analyses of Books. 
occupied by any means up to the present time fighting their way 
up to that position, and so left us to believe that the present forms 
may in time become in turn the ancestors of creatures wholly 
different. On the contrary, allies of the nautilus are recognised 
in the Silurian rocks, while remains of an extinct description of 
cuttle-fishes, called Belemnites, declare that at a time considerably 
before the chalk cliffs of England had begun to be deposited at 
the bottom of a long bygone sea, the remarkable anatomy of the 
cuttle-fish was already exemplified in a completeness which has 
indeed been varied, but not essentially deviated from since.” 
Dr. Cleland next contends that it was from no modification of 
the arthropods — crustaceans and insects — that vertebrate animals 
arose. This proposition we suspect no one will venture to dis- 
pute. It is indeed strange why the terrestrial arthropods should 
be so limited in size. There is, indeed, a fossil orthopterous 
insedt which with outspread wings must have measured nearly 
a yard across. But we doubt if in these days there exists an 
insedt of double the bulk and weight of ( e.g .) Golicithus Dvuvci, 
This, however, is a digression. 
After mentioning a number of other instances the author 
writes “ But man is a terminus, and not only a terminus, but 
thd terminus of the advance of vertebrate life.” He considers 
that the development of the vertebrate form has reached its limit 
of completion in man. He holds it “ in the last degree improbable 
that in the future there will be a progression in the construction 
of the human body that will give birth to greater intelligences 
than the heroes and sages of antiquity. ” 
Our readers, even from this slight sketch, will doubtless con- 
clude that Dr. Cleland’s pamphlet, brief as it is, deserves a most 
careful consideration, and that its arguments cannot be overlooked 
or hastily set aside. For that certain animal forms have not 
advanced, but remain down to our days substantially what their 
ancestors were untold aeons ago, is simply a fadt ; but it is still 
open to doubt whether this fadt or complex of fadts necessitates 
the interpretation which Prof. Cleland puts upon it. 
In endeavouring to reply to him we must first quote his con- 
cluding passage : — “ To me the animal kingdom appears not an 
indefinite growth like a tree, but a temple with many minarets, 
none of them capable of being prolonged, — while the central 
dome is completed by the structure of man. The development 
of the animal kingdom is the development of intelligence chained 
to matter ; the animals in which the nervous system has reached 
the greatest perfection are the vertebrates ; and in man that part 
of the nervous system which is the organ of intelligence reaches, 
as I have sought to show, the highest development possible to a 
vertebrate animal, while intelligence itself has grown to reflection 
and volition. On these grounds I believe, not that man is the 
highest form of intelligence, but that the human body is the 
highest form of animal life possible subjedt to the conditions of 
