Vestiges of the Natural History of CreationChambers, Robert
Science
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Chambers, Robert
Creation; Evolution (Biology)
We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts connected
with the laws of organic development. It is only in recent times that
physiologists have observed that each animal passes, in the course of its
germinal history, through a series of changes resembling the _permanent
forms_ of the various orders of animals inferior to it in the scale.
Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the head of the articulated
animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm, the annelida
being the lowest in the same class. The embryo of a crab resembles the
perfect animal of the inferior order myriapoda, and passes through all
the forms of transition which characterize the intermediate tribes of
crustacea. The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with
external gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of
which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal.
The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to its
higher place in the scale. Nor is man himself exempt from this law. His
first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule. His
organization gradually passes through conditions generally resembling a
fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its
specific maturity. At one of the last stages of his fœtal career, he
exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristic of the perfect
ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said to take leave of the
simial type, and become a true human creature. Even, as we shall see,
the varieties of his race are represented in the progressive development
of an individual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the
highest point yet attained in the animal scale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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