The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its ScopeCrampton, Henry Edward
Science
The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope
Crampton, Henry Edward
Evolution
Passing now to the classes that make up the group of vertebrates, we meet
first the lampreys or cyclostomes without jaws, and the others with jaws,
such as the fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mammals, each class
distinguished by certain definite characters in addition to the vertebral
column. The fishes have gills and scales; amphibia of to-day are
scaleless, and they are provided with gills when they are young and lungs
as adults; reptiles have scales and lungs; birds are warm-blooded and
feathered; while mammals are warm-blooded and haired. Is the human species
a unique kind of vertebrate, or does it find a place in one of these
classes? The occurrence of hair, of a four-chambered heart which propels
warm blood, of mammary glands, and of other systematic characters marks
this species as a kind of mammal and not as a vertebrate in a section by
itself.
The members of the class mammalia differ much among themselves; and now
that we recognize clearly that man is a mammalian vertebrate, the next
question is whether an order exists to which our type must be assigned, or
whether we have at last reached a point where it is justifiable to
establish an isolated division to contain the human species alone. We are
familiar with many representatives of different mammalian orders and with
the kind of structural characteristics that serve as convenient
distinctions in denoting their relationships. Horses and cattle, sheep,
and goats and pigs resemble one another in many respects besides their
hoofs, and they form one natural order; the well-developed gnawing teeth
of rats and rabbits and squirrels place these forms together in the order
rodentia; the structures adapting their possessors for a flesh-eating and
predatory life unite the tribes of the lion, wolf, bear, and seal, in the
order carnivora. Among these and other orders of mammalia is one to which
the lemurs, monkeys, and apes are assigned, because all these forms agree
in certain structural respects that place them apart from the other
mammalia, in the same way, for example, that the races of white men may be
recognized as a group distinct from the black and red races. But
comparative studies, prosecuted not only by those who have been forced to
adopt the evolutionary interpretation, but also by believers in special
creation like Linnaeus and Cuvier and other more modern opponents of
evolution, have shown that the peculiar qualities of this order are shared
by the human species. Indeed, the name of primates was given to this
section by Linnaeus himself, because the human body found a place in the
array which begins at the lower extreme with the lemurs and the monkeys
and ends with man at the other end. Again it is found that no separate
order of mammals exists to include only the genus _Homo_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account