On the Relations of Man to the Lower AnimalsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings
It would be tedious, and it is unnecessary for my present purpose, to
trace the process of development further; suffice it to say, that, by
a long and gradual series of changes, the rudiment here depicted and
described becomes a puppy, is born, and then, by still slower and less
perceptible steps, passes into the adult Dog.
There is not much apparent resemblance between a barndoor Fowl and the
Dog who protects the farm-yard. Nevertheless the student of development
finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg,
primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog,
but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division--that the primitive
groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned,
by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage
of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection
would hardly distinguish the two.
The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard,
Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. There is always, to
begin with, an egg having the same essential structure as that of the
Dog:--the yelk of that egg always undergoes division, or 'segmentation'
as it is often called: the ultimate products of that segmentation
constitute the building materials for the body of the young animal;
and this is built up round a primitive groove, in the floor of which
a notochord is developed. Furthermore, there is a period in which the
young of all these animals resemble one another, not merely in
outward form, but in all essentials of structure, so closely, that the
differences between them are inconsiderable, while, in their subsequent
course, they diverge more and more widely from one another. And it is a
general law, that, the more closely any animals resemble one another
in adult structure, the longer and the more intimately do their embryos
resemble one another: so that, for example, the embryos of a Snake and
of a Lizard remain like one another longer than do those of a Snake and
of a Bird; and the embryo of a Dog and of a Cat remain like one another
for a far longer period than do those of a Dog and a Bird; or of a Dog
and an Opossum; or even than those of a Dog and a Monkey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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