On the Genesis of SpeciesMivart, St. George Jackson
Religion
On the Genesis of Species
Mivart, St. George Jackson
Evolution (Biology)
Our wonder, moreover, may be increased when we recollect that the
two-gilled cephalopods have not yet been found below the lias, where they
at once abound; whereas the four-gilled cephalopods are Silurian forms.
Moreover, the absence is in this case significant in spite of the
imperfection of the geological record, because when we consider how many
individuals of various kinds of four-gilled cephalopods have been found, it
is fair to infer that at the least a certain small percentage of dibranchs
would also have left traces of their presence had they existed. Thus it is
probable that some four-gilled form was the progenitor of the dibranch
cephalopods. Now the four-gilled kinds (judging from the only existing
form, the nautilus) had the auditory organ in a very inferior condition of
development to what we find in the dibranch; thus we have not only evidence
of the independent high development of the organ in the former, but also
evidence pointing towards a certain degree of comparative rapidity in its
development.
Such being the case with regard to the organ of hearing, we have another
yet stronger argument with regard to the organ of sight, as has been well
pointed out by Mr. J. J. Murphy.[60] He calls attention to the fact that
the eye must have been perfected in at least "three distinct lines of
descent," alluding not only to the molluscous division of the animal
kingdom, and the division provided with a spinal column, but also to a
third primary division, namely, that which includes all insects, spiders,
crabs, &c., which are spoken of as Annulosa, and the type of whose
structure is as distinct from that of the molluscous type on the one hand,
as it is from that of the type with a spinal column (_i.e._ the vertebrate
type) on the other.
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