We have attended only to a few prominent characters in tracing the line
of evolution, but it will be understood that an advance in many organs
of the body is implied in these changes. In the lower mammals the
diaphragm, or complete partition between the organs of the breast and
those of the abdomen, is developed. It is not a sudden and mysterious
growth, and its development in the embryo to-day corresponds to the
suggestion of its development which the zoologist gathers from the
animal series. The ear also is now fully developed. How far the fish
has a sense of hearing is not yet fully determined, but the amphibian
certainly has an organ for the perception of waves of sound. Parts of
the discarded gill-arches are gradually transformed into the three bones
of the mammal's internal ear; just as other parts are converted into
mouth cartilages, and as--it is believed--one of the gill clefts is
converted into the Eustachian tube. In the Monotreme and Marsupial the
ear-hole begins to be covered with a shell of cartilage; we have the
beginning of the external ear. The jaws, which are first developed
in the fish, now articulate more perfectly with the skull. Fat-glands
appear in the skin, and it is probably from a group of these that the
milk-glands are developed. The origin of the hairs is somewhat obscure.
They are not thought to be, like the bird's feathers, modifications of
the reptile's scales, but to have been evolved from other structures in
the skin, possibly under the protection of the scales.
My purpose is, however, rather to indicate the general causes of
the onward advance of life than to study organs in detail--a vast
subject--or construct pedigrees. We therefore pass on to consider the
next great stride that is taken by the advancing life of the earth.
Millions of years of genial climate and rich vegetation have filled
the earth with a prolific and enormously varied population. Over this
population the hand of natural selection is outstretched, as it were,
and we are about to witness another gigantic removal of older types of
life and promotion of those which contain the germs of further advance.
As we have already explained, natural selection is by no means inactive
during these intervening periods of warmth. We have seen the ammonites
and reptiles, and even the birds and mammals, evolve into hundreds
of species during the Jurassic period. The constant evolution of more
effective types of carnivores and their spread into new regions, the
continuous changes in the distribution of land and water, the struggle
for food in a growing population, and a dozen other causes, are ever at
work. But the great and comprehensive changes in the face of the earth
which close the eras of the geologist seem to give a deeper and quicker
stimulus to its population and result in periods of especially rapid
evolution. Such a change now closes the Mesozoic Era, and inaugurates
the age of flowering plants, of birds, and of mammals.
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