Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other IllustrationsLocy, William A. (William Albert)
History
Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other Illustrations
Locy, William A. (William Albert)
Biology -- History
If we now turn to comparative anatomy, to classification, and to the
geographical distribution of animals, we find that it is necessary to
assume the doctrine of descent in order to explain the observed facts;
the evidence for evolution, indeed, becomes cumulative. But it is not
necessary, nor will space permit, to give extended illustrations from
these various departments of biological researches.
The Human Body.--Although the broad doctrine of evolution rests largely
upon the observation of animals and plants, there is naturally unusual
interest as to its teaching in reference to the development of the
human body. That the human body belongs to the animal series has long
been admitted, and that it has arisen through a long series of changes
is shown from a study of its structure and development. It retains
marks of the scaffolding in its building. The human body has the same
devious course of embryonic development as that of other mammals.
In the course of its formation gill-clefts make their appearance;
the circulation is successively that of a single-, a double-, and a
four-chambered heart, with blood-vessels for the gill-clefts. Time and
energy are consumed in building up rudimentary structures which are
evanescent and whose presence can be best explained on the assumption
that they are, as in other animals, hereditary survivals.
Wiedersheim has pointed out more than one hundred and eighty
rudimentary or vestigial structures belonging to the human body,
which indicate an evolutionary relationship with lower vertebrates.
It would require a considerable treatise to present the discoveries
in reference to man's organization, as Wiedersheim has done in his
_Structure of Man_. As passing illustrations of the nature of some of
these suggestive things bearing on the question of man's origin may be
mentioned: the strange grasping power of the newly born human infant,
retained for a short time, and enabling the babe to sustain its weight;
the presence of a tail and rudimentary tail muscles; of rudimentary ear
muscles; of gill-clefts, etc.
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