The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Religion
The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895
Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Evolution
The three pairs of jaws, modified legs, in the rear half of the head
show that this portion is composed of three segments. For only one
pair of legs is ever developed on a single segment. Embryology has
shown that the portion of the head in front of the mouth is also
composed of three segments. Possibly between the præ- and post-oral
portions still another segment should be included, making a total of
seven in the head. The head has thus been formed by drawing forward
segments from the trunk, and fusing them successively with the first
or primitive head segment. This is difficult to conceive of in the
fully developed insect, where the boundary between head and thorax
is very sharp. But the ancestors of insects looked more like
thousand-legs or centipedes, and here head and thorax are much less
distinct. But in the annelid the mouth is on the second segment;
here it is on the fourth. It has evidently travelled backward. That
the mouth of an animal can migrate seems at first impossible, but if
we had time to examine the embryology of annelids and insects, it
would no longer appear inconceivable or improbable. And its backward
migration brought it among the legs which were grasping and chewing
the food. And in vertebrates the mouth has changed its position,
though not in exactly the same way. Our present mouth is probably
not at all the mouth of the primitive ancestor of vertebrates. Thus
in the insect three segments have fused around the mouth, and three,
possibly four, in front of it. This makes a head worthy of the name.
The ganglia of the three post-oral segments, which bear the jaws,
have fused in one compound ganglion innervating the mouth and jaws.
Those of the three præ-oral segments have fused to form a brain.
Eyes are well developed, giving images sometimes accurate in detail,
sometimes very rude. Ears are not uncommon. The sense of smell is
often keen.
Perhaps the greatest advance of the insect is its adaptation to land
life. This gives it a larger supply of oxygen than any aquatic
animal could ever obtain. This itself stimulates every function, and
all the work of the body goes on more energetically. Then the heat
produced is conducted off far less rapidly than in aquatic forms.
Water is a good conductor of heat, and nearly all aquatic animals
are cold-blooded. The few which are warm-blooded are protected by a
thick layer of non-conducting fat. In all land animals, even when
cold-blooded, the work of the different systems is aided by the
longer retention of the heat in the body.
Let us recapitulate. The schematic worm had a body composed of two
concentric tubes. The outer was composed of the muscles of the body
covered by the protective integument. The inner tube was the
alimentary canal with its special muscles. Between these two was the
perivisceral cavity, filled with nutritive fluid, lymph, and
furnishing a safe lodging-place for the more delicate viscera. It
represented fairly the trunk of higher animals.
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