But hydra gives us but a poor idea of the coelenterata, to which kingdom it belongs. The higher coelenterata have nearly or quite all the tissues of higher animals—muscular, connective, glandular, etc. And by tissues we mean groups of cells modified in form and structure for the performance of a special work or function. The protozoa developed the cell for all time to come, the coelenterata developed the tissues which still compose our bodies. But they had them mainly in a diffuse form. A sort of digestive and reproductive system they did possess. But the work of arranging these tissues and condensing them into compact organs was to be done by the next higher group, the worms.

Let us now take a glance at certain stages of embryonic development which correspond to these earliest ancestral forms. We should expect some such correspondence from the fact already stated that the embryonic development of the individual is a brief recapitulation of the ancestral development of the species or larger group. The egg of the lowest vertebrate, amphioxus, shows these changes in a simple and apparently primitive form.



The fertilized egg of any animal consists of a single cell, a little mass of protoplasm containing a nucleus and surrounded by a structureless membrane. The egg is globular. The nucleus undergoes certain very peculiar, still but little understood, changes and divides into two. The protoplasm also soon divides into two masses clustering each around its own nucleus. The plane of division will be marked around the outside by a circular furrow, but the cells will still remain united by a large part of the membrane which bounds their adjacent, newly formed, internal faces.

Let us suppose that the egg lay so that the first plane of division was vertical and extending north and south. Each cell or half of the egg will divide into two precisely as before. The new plane of division will be vertical, but extending east and west. Each plane passes through the centre of the egg, and the four cells are of the same form and size, like much-rounded quarters of an orange. The third plane will lie horizontal or equatorial, and will divide each of these quarters into an upper and lower octant. The cells keep on dividing rapidly, the eight form sixteen, then thirty-two, etc. The sharp angle by which the cells met at the centre has become rounded off, and has left a little space, the segmentation cavity, filled with fluid in the middle of the embryo. The cells continue to press or be crowded away from the centre and form a layer one cell deep on the surface of the sphere.

This embryo, resembling a hollow rubber ball filled with fluid, is called a blastosphere. It corresponds in structure with the fully developed volvox, except, of course, in lacking reproductive cells.



If the rubber ball has a hole in it so that I can squeeze out the water, I can thrust the one-half into the other, and change the ball into a double-walled cup. A similar change takes place in the embryo. The cells of the lower half of the blastosphere are slightly larger than those of the upper half. This lower hemisphere flattens and then thrusts itself, or is invaginated, into the upper hemisphere of smaller cells and forms its lining. This cup-shaped embryo is called the gastrula. The cup deepens somewhat and becomes ovoid. Take a boiled egg, make a hole in the smaller end and remove the yolk, and you have a passable model of a gastrula. The shell corresponds to the ectoderm or outer layer of smaller cells; the layer of "white" represents the entoderm or lining of larger cells. The space occupied by the yolk corresponds to the archenteron or primitive digestive cavity; and the opening at the end to the primitive mouth or blastopore. Ectoderm and entoderm unite around the mouth. Both the blastosphere and gastrula often swim freely by flagella.

You can hardly have failed to notice how closely the gastrula corresponds to a hydra, and many facts lead us to believe that the still earlier ancestor of the hydra was free swimming, and that the tentacles are a later development correlated with its adult sessile life. Yet we must not forget that the hydra is even now not quite sessile, it moves somewhat. And our ancestor was almost certainly a free swimming gastraea, or hypothetical form corresponding in form and structure to the gastrula. The ancestor of man never settled down lazily into a sessile life.

But how is an adult worm or vertebrate formed out of such a gastrula? To answer this would require a course of lectures on embryology. But certain changes interest us. Between the ectoderm and entoderm of the gastrula, in the space occupied by the supporting membrane of hydra, a new layer of cells, the mesoderm, appears. This has been produced by the rapid growth and reproduction of certain cells of the entoderm which have migrated, so to speak, into this new position. In higher forms it becomes of continually greater importance, until finally nearly all the organs of the body develop from it. In our bodies only the lining of the mid-intestine and of its glands has arisen from the entoderm. And only the epidermis, or outer layer of our skin, and the nervous system and parts of our sense-organs have arisen from the ectoderm. But our mid-intestine is still the greatly elongated archenteron of the gastrula.

We may therefore compare the hydra or gastrula to a little portion of the lining of the human mid-intestine covered with a little flake of epidermis. This much the hydra has attained. But our bones and muscles and blood-vessels all come from the mesoderm by folding, plaiting, and channelling, and division of labor resulting in differentiation of structure. Of all true mesodermal structures the hydra has actually none, but in the ectodermal and entodermal cells he has the potentiality of them all. We must now try to discover how these potentialities became actualities in higher forms.

The third stage in our ancestral series is the turbellarian. This is a little, flat, oval worm, varying greatly in size in different species, and found both in fresh and salt water. Some would deny that this worm belonged in our series at all. But, while doubtless considerably modified, it has still retained many characteristics almost certainly possessed by our primitive bilateral ancestor. The different parts of hydra were arranged like those of most flowers, around one main vertical axis; it was thus radiate in structure, having neither front nor rear, right nor left side. But our little turbellaria, while still without a head, has one end which goes first and can be called the front end. The upper or dorsal surface is usually more colored with pigment cells than the lower or ventral surface, on which is the mouth. It has also a right and left side. It is thus bilateral.

The gastraea swam by cilia, little eyelash-like processes which urge the animal forward like a myriad of microscopic oars. In our bodies they are sometimes used to keep up a current, e.g., to remove foreign particles from the lungs. The turbellaria is still covered with cilia, probably an inheritance from the gastraea; for, while in smaller forms they may still be the principal means of locomotion, in larger ones the muscles are beginning to assume this function and the animal moves by writhing. The bilateral symmetry has arisen in connection with this mode of locomotion and is thus a mark of important progress.

In the turbellaria we find for the first time a true body-wall distinct from underlying organs. The outer layer of this is a ciliated epithelium or layer of cells. Under this an elastic membrane may occur. Then come true body muscles, running transversely, longitudinally and dorso-ventrally. Between the external transverse and the internal longitudinal layers we often find two muscular layers whose fibres run diagonally. The body is well provided with muscles, but their arrangement is still far from economical or effective.

Within the body-wall is the parenchym. This is a spongy mass of connectile tissue in which the other organs are embedded. The mouth lies in the middle, or near the front of the ventral surface. The intestine varies in form, but is provided with its own layers of longitudinal and transverse muscles, and usually has paired pouches extending out from it into the body parenchym. These seem to distribute the dissolved nutriment; hence the whole cavity is still often called a gastro-vascular cavity as serving both digestion and circulation. There is no anal opening, but indigestible material is still cast out through the mouth.

The animal can gain sufficient oxygen to supply its muscles and nerves, which are the principal seats of combustion, through the external surface. It has, therefore, no special respiratory organs. But the waste matter of the muscles cannot escape so easily, for these are becoming deeper seated. Hence we find an excretory system consisting of two tubes with many branches in the parenchym, and discharging at the rear end of the body. This again is a sign that the muscles are becoming more important, for the excretory system is needed mainly to remove their waste. These tubes maybe only greatly enlarged glands of the skin.



The nervous system consists of a plexus of fibres and cells, the cells originating impulses and the fibres conveying them. But this much was present in hydra also. Here the front end of the body goes foremost and is continually coming in contact with new conditions. Here the lookout for food and danger must be kept. Hence, as a result of constant exercise, or selection, or both, the nerve-plexus has thickened at this point into a little compact mass of cells and fibres called a ganglion. And because this ganglion throughout higher forms usually lies over the oesophagus, it is called the supra-oesophogeal ganglion. This is the first faint and dim prophecy of a brain, and it sends its nerves to the front end of the body. But there run from it to the rear end of the body four to eight nerve-cords, consisting of bundles of nerve-threads like our nerves, but overlaid with a coating of ganglion cells capable of originating impulses. These cords are, therefore, like the plexus from which they have condensed, both nerves and centres; differentiation has not gone so far as at the front of the body. Sense organs are still very rudimentary. Special cells of the skin have been modified into neuro-epithelial cells, having sensory hairs protruding from them and nerve-fibrils running from their bases.



In a very few turbellaria we find otolith vesicles. These are little sacks in the skin, lined with neuro-epithelial cells and having in the middle a little concretion of carbonate of lime hung on rather a stiffer hair, like a clapper in a bell. Such organs serve in higher animals as organs of hearing, for the sensory hairs are set in vibration by the sound-waves. It is quite as probable that they here serve as organs for feeling the slightest vibrations in the surrounding water, and thus giving warning of approaching food or danger. The animal has also eyes, and these may be very numerous. They are not able to form images of external objects, but only of perceiving light and the direction of its source. A little group of these eyes lies directly over the brain, near the front end of the body; the others are distributed around the front or nearly the whole margin of the body.

The turbellaria, doubtless, have the sense of smell, although we can discover no special olfactory organ. This sense would seem to be as old as protoplasm itself.

This distribution of the eyes around a large portion of the margin, and certain other characteristics of the adult structure and of the embryonic development, are very interesting, as giving hints of the development of the turbellaria from some radiate ancestor. The mouth is in a most unfavorable position, in or near the middle of the body, rarely at the front end, as the animal has to swim over its food before it can grasp it. The animal only slowly rids itself of old disadvantageous form and structure and adapts itself completely to a higher mode of life.

By far the most highly developed system in the body is the reproductive. It is doubtful whether any animal, except, perhaps, the mollusk, has as complicated and highly developed reproductive organs. By markedly higher forms they certainly grow simpler.

And here we must notice certain general considerations. We found that reproduction in the amoeba could be defined as growth beyond the limit normal to the individual. This form of growth benefits especially the species. The needs and expenses of the individual will therefore first be met and then the balance be devoted to reproduction. Now the income of the animal is proportional to its surface, its expense to its mass, and activity. And the ratio of surface to mass is most favorable in the smallest animals.[A] Hence, smaller animals, as a rule, increase faster than larger ones; and this is only one illustration of the fact that great size in an animal is anything but an unmixed advantage to its possessor. But muscles and nerves are the most expensive systems; here most of the food is burned up. Hence energetic animals have a small balance remaining. Now the turbellarian is small and sluggish, with a fair digestive system. With a great amount of nutriment at its disposal the reproductive system came rapidly to a high development, and relatively to other organs stands higher than it almost ever will again.

[Footnote A: Cf. p. 35.]

It is only fair to state that good authorities hold that so primitive an animal could not originally have had so highly developed a system, and that this characteristic must be acquired, not ancestral.

That certain portions of it may be later developments may be not only possible but probable. But anyone who has carefully studied the different groups of worms, will, I think, readily grant that in the stage of these flat worms reproduction was the dominant function, which had most nearly attained its possible height of development. From this time on the muscular and nervous systems were to claim an ever-increasing share of the nutriment, and the balance for reproduction is to grow smaller.

At the close of this lecture I wish to describe very briefly a hypothetical form. It no longer exists; perhaps it never did. But many facts of embryology and comparative anatomy point to such a form as a very possible ancestor of all forms higher than flat worms, viz., mollusks, arthropods, and vertebrates.

It was probably rather long and cylindrical, resembling a small and short earthworm in shape. The skin may have been much like that of turbellaria. Within this the muscles run in only two-directions—longitudinally and transversely. Between these and the intestine is a cavity—the perivisceral cavity—like that of our own bodies, but filled with a nutritive fluid like our lymph. This cavity seems to have developed by the expansion and cutting off of the paired lateral outgrowths of the digestive system of some old flat worm. But other modes of development are quite possible. The intestine has now an anal opening at or near the rear end of the body. The food moves only from front to rear, and reaches each part always in a certain condition. Digestion proper and absorption have been distributed to different cells, and the work is better done. Three portions can be readily distinguished: fore-intestine with the mouth, mid-intestine, as the seat of digestion and absorption, and hind-intestine, or rectum, with the anal opening. The front and hind-intestine are lined with infolded outer skin.

The nervous system consists of a supra-oesophageal ganglion with four posterior nerve-cords—one dorsal, two lateral, and one (or perhaps two) ventral. There were probably also remains of the old plexus, but this is fast disappearing. The excretory system consists of a pair of tubes discharging through the sides of the body-wall, and having each a ciliated, funnel-shaped opening in the perivisceral cavity. These have received the name of nephridia. Through these also the eggs and spermatozoa are discharged. The reproductive organs are modified patches of the peritoneum, or lining of the perivisceral cavity.

The number of muscles or muscular layers has been reduced in this animal. But such a reduction in the number of like parts in any animal is a sign of progress. And the longitudinal muscles have increased in size and strength, and the animal moves by writhing. Such a worm has the general plan of the body of the higher forms fairly well, though rudely, sketched. Many improvements will come, and details be added. But the rudiments of the trunk of even our own bodies are already visible. Head, in any proper sense of the term, and skeleton are still lacking; they remain to be developed.

And yet, taking the most hopeful view possible concerning the animal kingdom, its prospects of attaining anything very lofty seem at this point poor. Its highest representative is a headless trunk, without skeleton or legs. It has no brain in any proper sense of the word, its sense-organs are feeble; it moves by writhing. Its life is devoted to digestion and reproduction. Whatever higher organs it has are subsidiary to these lower functions. And yet it has taken ages on ages to develop this much. If this is the highest visible result of ages on ages of development, what hope is there for the future? Can such a thing be the ancestor of a thinking, moral, religious person, like man? "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural (animal, sensuous); and afterward that which is spiritual." First, in order of time, must come the body, and then the mind and spirit shall be enthroned in it. The little knot of nervous material which forms the supra-oesophageal ganglion is so small that it might easily escape our notice; but it is the promise of an infinite future. The atom of nervous power shall increase until it subdues and dominates the whole mass.



CHAPTER III

WORMS TO VERTEBRATES: SKELETON AND HEAD

In tracing the genealogy of any American family it is often difficult or impossible to say whether a certain branch is descended from John Oldworthy or his cousin or second cousin. In the latter cases to find the common ancestor we must go back to the grandfather or great-grandfather. The same difficulty, but greatly enhanced, meets us when we try to make a genealogical tree of the animal kingdom. Thus it seems altogether probable that all higher forms are descended from an ancestor of the same general structure and grade of organization as the turbellaria, although probably free swimming, and hence with somewhat different form and development, especially of the muscular system. It seems to me altogether probable that all, except possibly Mollusca, are descended from a common ancestor closely resembling the schematic worm last described. Some would, however, maintain that they diverged rather earlier than even the turbellaria; others after the schematic worm, if such ever existed. As far as our argument is concerned it makes little difference which of these views we adopt.

From our turbellaria, or possibly from some even more primitive ancestor, many lines diverged. And this was to be expected. The coelenterata, as we saw in hydra, had developed rude digestive and reproductive systems. The higher groups of this kingdom had developed all, or nearly all, the tissues used in building the bodies of higher animals—muscular, reproductive, connectile, glandular, nervous, etc. But these are mostly very diffuse. The muscular fibrils of a jelly-fish are mostly isolated or parallel in bands, rarely in compact well-defined bundles. The tissues have generally not yet been moulded into compact masses of definite form. There are as yet very few structures to which we can give the name of organs. To form organs and group them in a body of compact definite form was the work pre-eminently of worms. The material for the building was ready, but the architecture of the bilateral animal was not even sketched. And different worms were their own architects, untrammelled by convention or heredity, hence they built very different, sometimes almost fantastic, structures.

We must remember, too, the great age of this group. They are present in highly modified forms in the very oldest palaeozoic strata, and probably therefore came into existence as the first traces of continental areas were beginning to rise above the primeval ocean. They are literally "older than the hills." They were exposed to a host of rapidly changing conditions, very different in different areas. This prepares us for the fact that the worms represent a stage in animal life corresponding fairly well to the Tower of Babel in biblical history. The animal kingdom seems almost to explode into a host of fragments. Our genealogical tree fairly bristles with branches, but the branches do not seem to form any regular whorls or spirals. Few of them have developed into more than feeble growths. They now contain generally but few species. Many of them are largely or entirely parasitic, and in connection with this mode of life have undergone modifications and degeneration which make it exceedingly difficult to decipher their descent or relationships.

Four of these branches have reached great prominence in numbers and importance. One or two others were formerly equally numerous and have since become almost extinct; so the brachiopoda, which have been almost entirely replaced by mollusks. The same may very possibly be true of others. For of the amount of extinction of larger groups we have generally but an exceedingly faint conception. Indeed in this respect the worms have been well compared to the relics which fill the shelves of one of our grandmother's china-closets.

The four great branches are the echinoderms, mollusks, articulates, and vertebrates. The echinoderms, including starfishes, sea-urchins, and others straggled early from the great army. We know as yet almost nothing of their history; when deciphered it will be as strange as any romance. The vertebrates are of course the most important line, as including the ancestors of man. But we must take a little glance at mollusks, including our clams, snails, and cuttle-fishes; and at the articulates, including annelids and culminating in insects. The molluscan and articulate lines, though divergent, are of great importance to us as throwing a certain amount of light on vertebrate development; and still more as showing how a certain line of development may seem, and at first really be, advantageous, and still lead to degeneration, or at best to but partial success.

When we compare the forms which represent fairly well the direction of development of these three lines, a snail or a clam with an insect and a fish, we find clearly, I think, that the fundamental anatomical difference lies in the skeleton; and that this resulted from, and almost irrevocably fixed, certain habits of life.

We may picture to ourselves the primitive ancestor of mollusks as a worm having the short and broad form of the turbellaria, but much thicker or deeper vertically. A fuller description can be found in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," Art., Mollusca. It was hemi-ovoid in form. It had apparently the perivisceral cavity and nephridia of the schematic worm, and a circulatory system. In this latter respect it stood higher than any form which we have yet studied. Its nervous system also was rather more advanced. It had apparently already taken to a creeping mode of life and the muscles of its ventral surface were strongly developed, while its exposed and far less muscular dorsal surface was protected by a cap-like shell covering the most important internal organs. But the integument of the whole dorsal surface was, as is not uncommon in invertebrates, hardening by the deposition of carbonate of lime in the integument. And this in time increased to such an extent as to replace the primitive, probably horny, shell.

Into the anatomy of this animal or of its descendants we have no time to enter, for here we must be very brief. We have already noticed that the most important viscera were lodged safely under the shell. And as these increased in size or were crowded upward by the muscles of the creeping disk, their portion of the body grew upward in the form of a "visceral hump." Apparently the animal could not increase much in length and retain the advantage of the protection of the shell; and the shell was the dominating structure. It had entered upon a defensive campaign. Motion, slow at the outset, became more difficult, and the protection of the shell therefore all the more necessary. The shell increased in size and weight and motion became almost impossible. The snail represents the average result of the experiment. It can crawl, but that is about all; it is neither swift nor energetic. Even the earthworm can outcrawl it. It has feelers and eyes, and is thus better provided with sense-organs than almost any worm. It has a supra-oesophageal ganglion of fair size.

The clams and oysters show even more clearly what we might call the logical results of molluscan structure. They increased the shell until it formed two heavy "valves" hanging down on each side of the body and completely enclosing it. They became almost sessile, living generally buried in the mud and gaining their food, consisting mostly of minute particles of organic matter, by means of currents created by cilia covering the large curtain-like gills. Their muscular system disappeared except in the ploughshare-shaped "foot" used mostly for burrowing, and in the muscles for closing the shell. That portion of the body which corresponds to the head of the snail practically aborted with nearly all the sense-organs. The nervous system degenerated and became reduced to a rudiment. They had given up locomotion, had withdrawn, so to speak, from the world; all the sense they needed was just enough to distinguish the particles of food as they swept past the mouth in the current of water. They have an abundance of food, and "wax fat." The clam is so completely protected by his shell and the mud that he has little to fear from enemies. They have increased and multiplied and filled the mud. "Requiescat in pace."

But zooelogy has its tragedies as well as human history. Let us turn to the development of a third molluscan line terminating in the cuttle-fishes. The ancestors of these cephalopods, although still possessed of a shell and a high visceral hump, regained the swimming life. First, apparently, by means of fins, and then by a simple but very effective use of a current of water, they acquired an often rapid locomotion. The highest forms gave up the purely defensive campaign, developed a powerful beak, led a life like that of the old Norse pirates, and were for a time the rulers and terrors of the sea. With their more rapid locomotion the supra-oesophageal ganglion reached a higher degree of development, and it was served by sense-organs of great efficiency. They reduced the external shell, and succeeded, in the highest forms, of almost ridding themselves of this burden and encumbrance. Traces of it remain in the squids, but transformed into an internal quill-like, supporting, not defensive, skeleton. They have retraced the downward steps of their ancestors as far as they could. And the high development of their supra-oesophageal ganglion and sense-organs, and their powerful jaws and arms, or tentacles, show to what good purpose they have struggled. But the struggle was in vain, as far as the supremacy of the animal kingdom was concerned. Their ancestors had taken a course which rendered it impossible for their descendants to reach the goal. Their progress became ever slower. They were entirely and hopelessly beaten by the vertebrates. They struggled hard, but too late.

The history of mollusks is full of interest. They show clearly how intimately nervous development is connected with the use of the locomotive organs. The snail crept, and slightly increased its nervous system and sense-organs. The clam almost lost them in connection with its stationary life. The cephalopods were exceedingly active, developed, therefore, keen sense-organs and a very large and complicated supra-oesophagal ganglion, which we might almost call a brain.

The articulate series consists of two groups of animals. The higher group includes the crabs, spiders, thousand-legs, and finally the insects, and forms the kingdom of arthropoda. The lower members are still usually reckoned as worms, and are included under the annelids. Of these our common earthworm is a good example, and near them belong the leeches. But the marine annelids, of which nereis, or a clam-worm, is a good example, are more typical. They are often quite large, a foot or even more in length. They are composed of many, often several hundred, rings or segments. Between these the body-wall is thin, so that the segments move easily upon each other, and thus the animal can creep or writhe.

These segments are very much alike except the first two and the last. If we examine one from the middle of the body we shall find its structure very much like that of our schematic worm. Outside we find a very thin, horny cuticle, secreted by the layer of cells just beneath it, the hypodermis. Beneath the skin we find a thin layer of transverse muscles, and then four heavy bands of longitudinal muscles. These latter have been grouped in the four quadrants, a much more effective arrangement than the cylindrical layer of the schematic worm. Furthermore, the animal has on each segment a pair of fin-like projections, stiffened with bristles, the parapodia. These are moved by special muscles and form effective organs of creeping.



Within the muscles is the perivisceral cavity, and in its central axis the intestine, segmented like the body-wall. The reproductive organs are formed from patches of the lining of the perivisceral cavity, and the reproductive elements, when fully developed, fall into the perivisceral fluid and are carried out by nephridia, just such as we found in the schematic worm. Beside the perivisceral cavity and its fluid there is a special circulatory system. This consists mainly of one long tube above the intestine and a second below, with often several smaller parallel tubes. Transverse vessels run from these to all parts of the body. The dorsal tube pulsates and thus acts as a heart. The surface of the body no longer suffices to gather oxygen, hence we find special feathery gills on the parapodia. But these gills are merely expanded portions of the body wall, arranged so as to offer the greatest possible amount of surface where the capillaries of the blood system can be almost immediately in contact with the surrounding water.



The nervous system consists of a large supra-oesophageal ganglion in the first segment; then of a chain of ganglia, one to each segment, on the ventral side of the body. With one ganglion in each segment there is far more controlling, perceptive, ganglionic material than in lower worms. Furthermore the supra-oesophageal ganglion is relieved of a large part of the direct control of the muscles of each segment, and is becoming more a centre of control and perception for the body as a whole. It is more like our brain, commander-in-chief, the other ganglia constituting its staff. The sense-organs have improved greatly. There are tentacles and otolith vesicles as very delicate organs of feeling, or possibly of hearing also.

But the annelids were probably the first animals to develop an eye capable of forming an image of external objects. The importance of this organ in the pursuit of food or the escape from enemies can scarcely be over-estimated. The lining of the mouth and pharynx can be protruded as a proboscis, and drawn back by powerful muscles, and is armed with two or more horny claws. Eyes and claws gave them a great advantage over their not quite blind but really visionless and comparatively defenceless neighbors, and they must have wrought terrible extinction of lower and older forms. But while we cannot over-estimate the importance of these eyes, we can easily exaggerate their perfectness. They were of short range, fitted for seeing objects only a few inches distant, and the image was very imperfect in detail. But the plan or fundamental scheme of these eyes is correct and capable of indefinitely greater development than the organs of touch or smell, perhaps greater even than the otolith vesicle.

And the reflex influence of the eye on the brain was the greatest advantage of all. Hitherto with feeble muscles and sense-organs it has hardly paid the animal to devote more material to building a larger brain. It was better to build more muscle. But now with stronger muscles at its command, and better sense-organs to report to it, every grain of added brain material is beginning to be worth ten devoted to muscle. The muscular system will still continue to develop, but the brain has begun an almost endless march of progress. The eye becomes of continually increasing advantage and importance because it has a capable brain to use it; and brain is a more and more profitable investment, because it is served by an ever-improving eye.



The annelid had hit upon a most advantageous line of development, which led ultimately to the insect. The study of the insect will show us clearly the advantages and defects of the annelid plan. First of all, the insect, like the mollusk, has an external skeleton. But the skeleton of the mollusk was purely protective, a hindrance to locomotion. That of the insect is still somewhat protective, but is mainly, almost purely, locomotive. It is never allowed to become so heavy as to interfere with locomotion. In the second place, the insect has three body regions, having each its own special functions or work. And one of these is a head. The annelid had two anterior segments differing from those of the rest of the body; these may, perhaps, be considered as the foreshadowings of a structure not yet realized; they can only by courtesy be called a head. Thirdly, the insect has legs. The annelid had fin-like parapodia, approaching the legs of insects about as closely as the fins of a fish approach the legs of a mammal. The reproductive and digestive systems, while somewhat improved, are not very markedly higher than those of annelids. The excretory system has more work to perform and reaches a rather higher development.

But in these organs there is no great or striking change; the time for marked and rapid development of the digestive and reproductive systems has gone by. Material can be more profitably invested in brain or muscle. Air is carried to all parts of the body by a special system of air-sacks and tubes. This is a very advantageous structure for small animals with an external skeleton. In very large animals, or where the skeleton is internal, it would hardly be practicable; the risk of compression of the tubes at some point, and of thus cutting off the air-supply of some portion of the body, would be altogether too great.

The circulatory system is very poor. It consists practically only of a heart, which drives the blood in an irregular circulation between the other organs of the body much as with a syringe you might keep up a system of currents in a bowl of water. But the rapidity of the flow of the blood in our bodies is mainly to furnish a supply of oxygen to the organs. A tea-spoonful of blood can carry a fair amount of dissolved solid nutriment like sugar, it can carry at each round but a very little gas like oxygen. Hence the blood must make its rounds rapidly, carrying but a little oxygen at each circuit. But in the insect the blood conveys only the dissolved solid nutriment, the food; hence a comparatively irregular circulation answers all purposes.

The skeleton is a thickening of the horny cuticle of the annelid on the surface of each segment. The horny cylinder surrounding each segment is composed of several pieces, and on the abdomen these are united by flexible, infolded membranes. This allows the increase in the size of the segment corresponding to the varying size of the digestive and reproductive systems. In this part of the body the skeletal ring of each segment is joined to that of the segments before and behind it in the same manner. But in other parts of the body we shall find the skeletal pieces of each segment and the rings of successive segments fused in one plate of mail. The legs are the parapodia of annelids carried to a vastly higher development. They are slender and jointed, and yet often very powerful. A large portion of the muscular system of the body is attached to these appendages.

But the insect has also jaws. The annelid had teeth or claws attached to the proboscis. But true jaws are something quite different. They always develop by modifying some other organ. In the insect they are modified legs. This is shown first by their embryonic development. But the king- or horseshoe-crab has still no true jaws, but uses the upper joints of its legs for chewing. There are primitively three pairs of jaws of various forms for the different kinds of food of different species or higher groups. But some of them may disappear and the others be greatly modified into awls for piercing, or a tube for sucking honey. Into the wonderful transformations of these modified legs we cannot enter.

The muscles are no longer arranged to form a sack as in annelids. Transverse muscles, running parallel to the unyielding plates of chitin or horn could accomplish nothing. They have largely disappeared. The work of locomotion has been transferred from the trunk to the legs.

The abdomen of the insect is as clearly composed of distinct segments as the body of the annelid. Of these there are perhaps typically eleven. The thorax is composed of three segments, distinct in the lowest forms, fused in the highest. This fusion of segments in the thorax of the highest forms furnishes a very firm framework for the attachment of wings and muscles. These wings are a new development, and how they arose is still a question. But they give the insect the capability of exceedingly rapid locomotion.

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 prae- 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 prae-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.

The annelid added segmentation, and thus greater freedom of motion by the parapodia. But the segments were still practically alike. In the insect division of labor took place, that is, each group of segments was allotted its own special work; and these groups of segments were modified in structure to best suit the performance of this part of the work of the body. The abdomen was least modified and its eleven segments were devoted to digestion, reproduction, and excretion—the old vegetative functions. Three segments were united in the thorax; all their energy was turned to locomotion, and the insect became thus an exceedingly active, swift animal. The third body-region, the head, includes six segments, of which three surrounded the mouth and furnished the jaws, while two more were crowded or drawn forward in order that their ganglia might be added to the old supraoesophageal ganglion and form a brain. It is interesting to note that a form, peripatus, still exists which stands almost midway between annelids and insects and has only four segments in the head. The formation of the head was thus a gradual process, one segment being added after another.

In the turbellaria the dominant functions were digestion and reproduction, and their organs composed almost the whole body. Here only eleven segments at most are devoted to these functions, and nine in head and thorax to locomotion and brain. Head and thorax have increased steadily in importance, while the abdomen has decreased as steadily in number of segments. And the brain is increasing thus rapidly because there are now muscles and sense-organs of sufficient power to make such a brain of value. And this brain perceives not only objects and qualities, but invisible relations between these, and this is an advance amounting to a revolution. It remembers, and uses its recollections. It is capable of learning a little by experience and observation. The A, B, C of thinking was probably learned long before the insect's time, and the bee shows a fair amount of intelligence.

The line of development which the insect followed was comparatively easy and its course probably rapid. Certain crustacea, aquatic arthropoda, are among the oldest fossils, and it is possible that insects lived on the land before the first fish swam in the sea. They had fine structure and powers; and yet during the later geologic periods they have scarcely advanced a step, and are now apparently at a standstill. They ran splendidly for a time, and then fell out of the race. What hindered and stopped them?

One vital defect in their whole plan of organization is evident. The external skeleton is admirably suited to animals of small size, but only to these. In larger animals living on land it would have to be made so heavy as to be unwieldy and no longer economical. Their mode of breathing also is fitted only for animals of small size having an external skeleton. Whatever may be our explanation the fact remains that insects are always small. This is in itself a disadvantage. Very small animals cannot keep up a constant high temperature unless the surrounding air is warm, for their radiating surface is too large in comparison with their heat-producing mass. At the first approach of even cool weather they become chilled and sluggish, and must hibernate or die. They are conformed to but a limited range of environment in temperature.

But small size is, as a rule, accompanied by an even greater disadvantage. It seems to be almost always correlated with short life. Why this is so, or how, we do not know. There are exceptions; a crow lives as long as a man; or would, if allowed to. But, as a rule, the length of an animal's days is roughly proportional to the size of its body. And the insect is, as a rule, very short-lived. It lives for a few days or weeks, or even months, but rarely outlasts the year. It has time to learn but little by experience. The same experience must be passed, the same emergency arise and be met, over and over again during the lifetime of the same individual if the animal is to learn thereby. And intelligence is based upon experience. Hence insects can and do possess but a low grade of intelligence. But instinct is in many cases habit fixed by heredity and improved by selection. The rapid recurrence of successive generations was exceedingly favorable to the development of instincts, but very unfavorable to intelligence. Insects are instinctive, the highest vertebrates intelligent. The future can never belong to a tiny animal governed by instincts. Mollusks and insects have both failed to reach the goal; another plan of structure than theirs must be sought if the animal kingdom is to have a future.

The future belonged to the vertebrate. To begin with less characteristic organs the digestive system is much like that of the annelid or schematic worm, but with greatly increased glandular and absorptive surfaces. The present mouth of nearly all vertebrates is probably not primitive. It is almost certainly one of the gill-slits of some old ancestor of fish, such as now are used to discharge the water which is used for respiration. The jaws are modified branchial arches or the cartilaginous or bony rods which in our present fish support the fringe of gills. These have formed a pair of exceedingly effective and powerful jaws. The reproductive system holds still to the old type and shows little if any improvement. The excretory organs, kidneys, are composed primitively of nephridial tubes like those of the schematic worm or annelid, but immensely increased in number, modified, and improved in certain very important particulars. The muscles in simplest forms are composed of heavy longitudinal bands, especially developed toward the dorsal surface of the body to the right and left of the axial skeleton. Locomotion was produced by lashing the tail right and left, as still in fish. There is improvement in all these organs, except perhaps the reproductive, but nothing very new or striking. The great improvement from this time on was not to be sought in the vegetative organs, or even directly to any great extent in muscles.

The new and characteristic organ was not the vertebral column, or series of vertebrae, or backbone, from which the kingdom has derived its name. This was a later production. The primitive skeleton was the notochord, still appearing in the embryos of all vertebrates and persisting throughout life in fish. This is an elastic rod of cartilage, lying just beneath the spinal marrow or nerve-cord, which runs backward from the brain. The nerve-centres are therefore here all dorsal, and the notochord or skeleton lies between these and the digestive or alimentary canal. The skeleton of the clam or snail is purely protective and a hindrance to locomotion. That of the insect is almost purely locomotive, but external, that of the vertebrate purely locomotive and internal. It does not lie outside even of the nervous system, although this system especially required, and was worthy of, protection. It does not protect even the brain; the skull of vertebrates is an after-thought. It is almost the deepest seated of all organs. But lying in the central axis of the body it furnishes the very best possible attachment for muscles. Around this primitive notochord was a layer of connectile tissue which later gave rise to the vertebrae forming our backbone.



The nervous system on the dorsal surface of the notochord consists of the brain in the head and the spinal marrow running down the back. The brain of all except the very lowest vertebrates consists of four portions: 1. The cerebrum, or cerebral lobes, or simply "forebrain," the seat of consciousness, thought, and will, and from which no nerves proceed. Whether the primitive vertebrate had any cerebrum is still uncertain. 2. The mid-brain, which sends nerves to the eyes, and in this respect reminds us of the brain of insects. Its anterior portion appears from embryology to be very primitive. 3. The small brain, or cerebellum, which in all higher forms is the centre for co-ordination of the motions of the body. 4. The medulla, which controls especially the internal organs. The spinal marrow, or that portion of the nervous system which lies outside of the head, is at the same time a great nerve-trunk and a centre for reflex action of the muscles of the body. But the development of these distinct portions and the division of labor between them must have been a long and gradual process.

We have every reason to believe that here, as in insects, the head has been formed by annexation of segments from the rump and the fusion of their nervous matter with that of the brain. But here, instead of only three segments, from nine to fourteen have been fused in the head to furnish the material for the brain. Notochord and backbone may be the most striking and apparent characteristic of vertebrates, but their predominant characteristic is brain. On this system they lavished material, giving it from three to four times as much as any lower or earlier group had done. They very early set apart the cerebral lobes to be the commander-in-chief and centre of control for all other nerve-centres. To this all report, and from it all directly or indirectly receive orders. It can say to every other organ in the body, "Starve that I may live." It is the seat of thought and will. The other portions of the brain report to it what they have gathered of vision or sound; it explains the vision or song or parable. It is relieved as far as possible from all lower and routine work that it may think and remember and govern. The vertebrate built for mind, not neglecting the body.

Every trait of vertebrates is a promise of a great future. Its internal skeleton gives it the possibility of large size. This gave it in time the victory in the struggle with its competitors, as to whether it should eat or be eaten. It is vigorous and powerful, for all its organs are at the best. It gives the possibility of later, on land, becoming warm-blooded, i.e., of maintaining a constant high temperature. It is thus resistant to climate and hardship. In time its descendants will face the arctic winter as well as the heat of the tropics.

But it has started on the road which leads to mind. The greater size is correlated with longer life. The lessons of experience come to it over and over again, and it can and must learn them. It is the intelligent, remembering, thinking type. The insect had begun to peer into the world of invisible and intangible relations, the vertebrate will some day see them. This much is prophecied in his very structure. He must be heir to an indefinite future.

* * * * *

You have probably noticed that the vertebrate differs greatly from all his predecessors. The gulf between him and them is indeed wide and deep. His origin and ancestry are yet far from certain. But an attempt to decipher his past history, though it may lead to no sure conclusions, will yet be of use to us. Practically all aquatic vertebrates lead a swimming life, neither sessile nor creeping. The embryonic development of our appendages leads to the same conclusion. We must never forget that the embryonic development of the individual recapitulates briefly the history of the development of the race. Now the legs and arms, or fore- and hind-legs, of higher vertebrates and the corresponding paired fins of fish develop in the embryo as portions of a long ridge extending from front to rear of the side of the body.

This justifies the inference that the primitive vertebrate ancestor had a pair of long fins running along the sides of the body, but bending slightly downward toward the rear so as to meet one another and continue as a single caudal fin behind the anal opening. Such fins, like the feathers of an arrow, could be useful only to keep the animal "on an even keel" as it was forced through the water by the lateral sweeps of the tail. They would have been useless for creeping.

But there is another piece of evidence that he was a free swimming form. All vertebrates breathe by gills or lungs, and these are modified portions of the digestive system, of the walls of the oesophagus, from which even the lung is an embryonic outgrowth. Now practically all invertebrates breathe through modified portions of the integument or outer surface of the body, and their gills are merely expansions of this. In the annelid they are projections of the parapodia, in the mollusk expansions of the skin, where the foot or creeping sole joins the body. Why did the vertebrate take a new and strange, and, at first sight, disadvantageous mode of breathing? There must have been some good reason for this. The most natural explanation would seem to be that he had no projections on his outer surface which could develop into gills, and farther, that he could not afford to have any. Now projections on the lower portion of the sides of the body would be an advantage in creeping, but a hindrance in any such mode of swimming as we have described, or indeed in any mode of writhing through the water.

Furthermore, if he lived, not a creeping life on the bottom, but swimming in the water above, he would have to live almost entirely on microscopic animals and embryos; and these would be most easily captured by a current of water brought in at the mouth. The whole branchial apparatus in its simplest forms would seem to be an apparatus for sifting out the microscopic particles of food and only later a purely respiratory apparatus. Moreover, we have seen that the parapodia of annelids naturally point to the development of an external skeleton, for their muscles are already a part of the external body-wall and attached to the already existing horny cuticle. The logical goal of their development was the insect.

Now I do not wish to conceal from you that many good zooelogists believe that the vertebrate is descended from annelids; but for this and other reasons such a descent appears to me very improbable. It would seem far more natural to derive the vertebrate from some free swimming form like the schematic worm, whose largest nerve-cord lay on the dorsal surface because its branches ran to heavy muscles much used in swimming. Later the other nerve-cords degenerated, for such a degeneration of nerve-cords is not at all impossible or improbable. "No thoroughfare" is often written across paths previously followed by blood or nervous impulses, when other paths have been found more economical or effective.

But where did the notochord come from? I do not know. It always forms in the embryo out of the entoderm or layer which becomes the lining of the intestine. Now this is a very peculiar origin for cartilage, and the notochord is a very strange cartilage even if we have not made a mistake in calling it cartilage at all. My best guess would be that it is simply a thickened portion of the upper median surface of the intestine to keep the "balls" of digesting nutriment or other hard particles in the intestine from "grinding" against the nerve-cord as they are crowded along in the process of digestion. Once started its elasticity would be a great aid in swimming.

Professor Brooks has called attention to the fact that the higher a group stands in development, the longer its ancestors have maintained a swimming life. Thus we have noticed that the sponges were the first to settle; then a little later the mass of the coelenterates followed their example. But the etenophora, the nearest relatives of bilateral animals, have remained free swimming. Then the flat worms and mollusks took to a creeping mode of life, while the annelids and vertebrates still swam. Then the annelids settled to the bottom and crept, and all their descendants remained creeping forms. The vertebrates alone remained swimming, and probably neither they nor their descendants ever crept until they emerged on the land, or as amphibia were preparing for land life. If this be true, it is a fact worthy of our most careful consideration. The swimming life would appear to be neither as easy nor as economical as the creeping. It is certainly hard to believe that food would not have been obtained with less effort and in greater abundance at the bottom than in the water above. The swimming life gave rise to higher and stronger forms; but did its maintenance give immediate advantage in the struggle for existence? This is an exceedingly interesting and important question, and demands most careful consideration. But we shall be better prepared to answer it in a future lecture.

The period of development of mollusks, articulates, and vertebrates, is really one. They developed to a certain extent contemporaneously. The development of vertebrates was slow, and they were the last to appear on the stage of geological history.

You must all have noticed that development, during this period, takes on a much more hopeful form than during that described in the last chapter. Then digestion and reproduction were dominant. Now muscle is of the greatest importance. If this fails of development, as in mollusks, the group is doomed to degeneration or at best stagnation. But we have seen the dawn of a still higher function. In insects and vertebrates the brain is becoming of importance, and absorbing more and more material. This is the promise of something vastly higher and better. Better sense-organs are appearing, fitted to aid in a wider perception of more distant objects. The vertebrate has discovered the right path; though a long journey still lies before it. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.



CHAPTER IV

VERTEBRATES: BACKBONE AND BRAIN

In tracing man's ancestry from fish upward we ought properly to describe three or four fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and then take up the series of mammalian ancestors. But we have not sufficient time for so extended a study, and a simpler method may answer our purpose fairly well. Let us fix our attention on the few organs which still show the capacity of marked development, and follow each one of these rapidly in its upward course.

We must remember that there are changes in the vegetative organs. The digestive and excretory systems improve. But this improvement is not for the sake of these vegetative functions. Brain and muscle demand vastly more fuel, and produce vastly more waste which must be removed. At almost the close of the series the reproductive system undergoes a modification which is almost revolutionary in its results. But we shall find that this modification is necessitated by the smaller amount of material which can be spared for this function; not by its increasing importance, still less its dominance for its own worth. The vertebrate is like an old Roman; everything is subordinated to mental and physical power. He is the world conqueror.

The important changes from fish upward affect the following organs: 1. The skeleton. A light, solid framework must be developed for the body. 2. The appendages start as fins, and end as the legs and arms of man. 3. The circulatory and respiratory systems developed so as to carry with the utmost rapidity and certainty fuel and oxygen to the muscular and nervous high-pressure engines. Or, to change the figure, they are the roads along which supplies and munitions can be carried to the army suddenly mobilized at any point on the frontier. 4. Above all, the brain, especially the cerebrum, the crown and goal of vertebrate structure. The improvement is now practically altogether in the animal organs of locomotion and thought. Still, among these animal organs, the lower systems will lead in point of time. The brain must to a certain extent wait for the skeleton.

1. The skeleton. The axial skeleton consists, in the lowest fish, of the notochord, a cylindrical unsegmented rod of cartilage running nearly the length of the body. This is surrounded by a sheath of connective tissue, at first merely membranous, later becoming cartilaginous or gristly. Pieces of cartilage extend upward over the spinal marrow, and downward around the great aortic artery, forming the neural and haemal arches. These unite with the masses of cartilage surrounding the notochord to form cartilaginous vertebrae, which may be stiffened by an infiltration of carbonate of lime. The vertebral column of sharks has reached this stage. Then the cartilaginous vertebrae ossify and form a true backbone. I have described the process as if it were very simple. But only the student of comparative osteology can have any conception of the number of experiments which were tried in different groups before the definite mode of forming a bony vertebra was attained. At the same time the skull was developing in a somewhat similar manner. But the skull is far more complex in origin and undergoes far more numerous and important changes than the simpler vertebral column. Into its history we have no time to enter.

And what shall we say of bone itself as a mere material or tissue, with its admirable lightness, compactness, and flawlessness. And every bone in our body is a triumph of engineering architecture. No engineer could better recognize the direction of strain and stress, and arrange his rods and columns, arches and buttresses, to suitably meet them, than these problems are solved in the long bone of our thigh. And they must be lengthened while the child is leaping upon them. An engineer is justly proud if he can rebuild or lengthen a bridge without delaying the passage of a single train. But what would he say if you asked him to rebuild a locomotive, while it was running even twenty miles an hour? And yet a similar problem had to be solved in our bodies.

But the vertebral column is not perfected by fish. The vertebrae with few exceptions are hollow in front and behind, biconcave; and between each two vertebrae there is a large cavity still occupied by the notochord. Thus these vertebrae join one another by their edges, like two shallow wine-glasses placed rim to rim. Only gradually is the notochord crowded out so that the vertebrae join by their whole adjacent surfaces. Even in highest forms, for the sake of mobility, they are united by washer-like disks of cartilage. Biconcave vertebrae persisted through the oldest amphibia, reptiles, and birds. But finally a firm backbone and skull were attained.

2. The appendages. Of these we can say but little. The fish has oar-like fins, attached to the body by a joint, but themselves unjointed. By the amphibia legs, with the same regions as our own and with five toes, have already appeared. The development of the leg out of the fin is one of the most difficult and least understood problems of vertebrate comparative anatomy. The legs are at first weak and scarcely capable of supporting the body. Only gradually do they strengthen into the fore- and hind-legs of mammals, or into the legs and wings of birds and old flying reptiles.

3. Changes in the circulatory and respiratory systems. The fish lives altogether in the water and breathes by gills, but the dipnoi among fishes breathes by lungs as well as gills. As long as respiration takes place by gills alone, the circulation is simple; the blood flows from the heart to the gills, and thence directly all over the body; the oxygenated blood from the gills does not return directly to the heart. But the blood from the lungs does return to the heart; and there at first mixes in the ventricle with the impure blood which has returned from the rest of the body. Gradually a partition arises in the ventricle, dividing it into a right and left half. Thus the two circulations of the venous blood to the lungs, and of the oxygenated blood over the body, are more and more separated until, in higher reptiles, they become entirely distinct.

As the animal came on land and breathed the air, more completely oxygenated blood was carried to the organs, and their activity was greatly heightened. As more and more heat was produced by the combustion in muscular and nervous tissues, and less was lost by conduction, the temperature of the body rose, and in birds and mammals becomes constant several degrees above the highest summer temperature of the surrounding air.

The changes in the brain affect mainly the large and small brain. The cerebellum increases with the greater locomotive powers of the animal. But its development is evidently limited. The large brain, or cerebrum, is in fish hardly as heavy as the mid-brain; in amphibia the reverse is true. In higher recent reptiles the cerebrum would somewhat outweigh all the other portions of the brain put together. In mammals it extends upward and backward, has already in lower forms overspread the mid-brain, and is beginning to cover the small brain. But this was not so in the earliest mammals. Here the cerebrum was small, more like that of reptiles. But during the tertiary period the large brain began to increase with marvellous rapidity. It was very late in arriving at the period of rapid development, but it kept on after all the other organs of the body had settled down into comparative rest, perhaps retrogression.

We have given thus a rapid sketch in outline of the changes in the most characteristic systems between fish and mammals. Some of the changes which took place in mammals were along the same lines, but one at least is so new and unexpected that this highest class demands more careful and detailed examination.

The mammal is a vertebrate. Hence all its organs are at their best. But mammals stand, all things considered, at the head of vertebrates. The skeleton is firm and compact. The muscles are beautifully moulded and fitted to the skeleton so as to produce the greatest effect with the least mass and weight of tissue. The sense-organs are keen, and the eye and ear especially delicate, and fitted for perception at long range. Yet in all these respects they are surpassed by birds. As a mere anatomical machine the bird always seems to me superior to the mammal. It is not easy to see why it failed, as it has, to reach the goal of possibility of indefinite development and dominance in the animal world. Why he stopped short of the higher brain development I cannot tell. The fact remains that the mammal is pre-eminent in brain power, and that this gave him the supremacy.

But mammals came very late to the throne, and the probability of their ever gaining it must for ages have appeared very doubtful. They seem to have been a fairly old group with a very slow early development. Reptiles especially, and even birds, were far more precocious than these slower and weaker forms which crept along the earth. But reptiles and birds, like many other precocious children, soon reached the limit of their development. They had muscle, the mammal brain and nerve; the mammal had the staying power and the future. Bitter and discouraging must have been the struggle of these feeble early mammals with their larger, swifter, and more powerful, reptilian relatives. And yet, perhaps, by this very struggle the mammal was trained to shrewdness and endurance.

The primitive mammals laid eggs like reptiles or birds. Only two genera, echidna and platypus, survive to bear witness of these old oviparous groups, and these only in New Zealand. These retain several old reptilian characteristics. Their lower position is shown also by the fact that the temperature of their bodies is, at least, ten degrees Fahrenheit below that of higher mammals. One of these carries the egg in a pouch on the ventral surface; the other, living largely in water, deposits its eggs in a nest in a burrow in the side of the bank of the stream.

After these came the marsupials. In these the eggs develop in a sort of uterus; but there is no placenta, in the sense of an organic connection between the embryo and the uterus of the mother. The young are at birth exceedingly small and feeble. The adult giant Kangaroo weighs over one hundred pounds; the young are at birth not as large as your thumb. They are placed by the mother in a marsupial pouch on her ventral surface, and here nourished till able to care for themselves.

Pardon a moment's digression. The marsupials, except the opossum, are confined to Australia, and the oviparous mammals, or monotremes, to New Zealand. Formerly the marsupials, at least, ranged all over Europe and Asia, for we have indisputable evidence in their fossil remains. But they have survived only in this isolated area, and here apparently only because their isolation preserved them from the competition with higher forms. If the Australian continent had not been thus early cut off from all the rest of the world, the only trace of both these lower groups would have been the opossum in America and certain peculiarities in the development of the egg in higher mammals. This shows us how much weight should be assigned to the formerly popular argument of the "missing links." The wonder is not that so many links are missing, but that any of these primitive forms have come down to us. For we see here another proof of the fearful extermination of lower forms during the progress of life on the globe. It seems as if the intermediate forms were less common among these most recent animals than among the older types. This may not be true, for it is not easy to compare the gap between two mammals with that between two worms or insects, and mistakes are very easily made. But it seems as if extermination had done its work more ruthlessly among these highest forms than among their humbler and lower ancestors. I would not lay much weight on such an opinion; but, if true, it has a meaning and is worthy of study.

In higher, true, placental mammals the period of pregnancy is much longer, and the young are born in a far higher stage of development, or rather, growth. The stage of growth at which the young are born differs markedly in different groups. A new-born kitten is a much feebler, less developed being than a new-born calf. An embryonic appendage, the allantois, used in reptiles and birds for respiration, has here been turned to another purpose. It lays itself against the walls of the uterus, uterine projections interlock with those which it puts forth, and the blood of the mother circulates through a host of capillaries separated from those of the blood system of the embryo only by the thinnest membrane. This is the placenta, developed, in part from the allantois of the embryo, in part from the uterus of the mother. It is not a new organ, but an old one turned to better and fuller use. In these closely associated systems of blood-vessels, nutriment and oxygen diffuse from the blood of the mother into that of the embryo, and thus rapid growth is assured. The importance and far-reaching effect of this new modification in the old reproductive system cannot be over-estimated. The internal intra-uterine development of the young, and the mammalian habit of suckling them, far more than any other factors, have made man what he is. Some explanation must be sought for such a fact.

We have already seen that any animal devotes to reproduction the balance between income and expenditure of nutriment. Now, the digestive system is here well developed, and the income is large. But we have already noticed that, as animals grow larger, the ratio between the digestive surface and the mass to be supported grows continually smaller. On account of size alone the mammal has but a small balance. But the amount of expenditure is proportional to the mass and activity of the muscular and nervous systems. And the mammal is, and from the beginning had to be, an exceedingly active, energetic, and nervous animal. The income has increased, but the expenses have far outrun the increase. The mammal can devote but little to reproduction.

Moreover, it requires a large amount of material to form a mammalian egg, such as that of the monotreme. It requires indefinitely more nutriment to build a mammal than a worm, for the former is not only larger and more perfect at birth; it is also vastly more complicated. The embryonic journey has, so to speak, lengthened out immensely. One monotreme egg represents more economy and saving than a thousand eggs of a worm. Moreover, where the individuals are longer lived and the generations follow one another at longer intervals, the number of favorable variations and the possibility of conformity to environment through these is greatly lessened. In such a group it is of the utmost importance that every egg should develop; the destruction of a single one is a real and important loss to the species. It is not enough to produce such an egg; it must be most scrupulously guarded. Even the egg of the platypus is deposited in a nest in a hole in the bank, and the female Echidna carries the egg in a marsupial pouch until it develops.

Notice further that among certain species of fish, amphibia, and reptiles, the females carry the eggs in the body until the embryos or young are fairly developed. Viviparous forms are unknown by birds, probably because this mode of development is incompatible with flight, their dominant characteristic. Putting these facts together, what more probable than that certain primitive egg-laying mammals should have carried the eggs as long as possible in the uterus. The embryo under these conditions would be better nourished by a secretion of the uterine glands than by a very large amount of yolk. The yolk would diminish and the egg decrease in size, and thus the marsupial mode of development would have resulted. And, given the marsupial mode of development and an embryo possessing an allantois, it is almost a physiological necessity that in some forms at least a placenta should develop. That the placenta has resulted from some such process of evolution is proven by its different stages of development in different orders of mammals. And even the feeblest attachment of the allantois of the embryo to the wall of the uterus would be of the greatest advantage to the species.

This is not the whole explanation; other factors still undiscovered were undoubtedly concerned. But even this shows us that the internal development of the young and the habit of suckling them was a logical result of mammalian structure and position. The grand results of this change we shall trace farther on.

The changes from the lower true mammals to the apes are of great interest, but we can notice only one or two of the more important. The prosimii, or "half apes," including the lemurs, are nearly all arboreal forms. Perhaps they were driven to this life by their more powerful competitors. The arboreal life developed the fingers and toes, and most of these end, not with a claw, but with a nail. The little group has much diversity of structure, and at present finds its home mainly in Madagascar; though in earlier times apparently occurring all over the globe. The brain is more highly developed than in the average mammal, but far inferior to that of the apes. They have a fairly opposable thumb.

The highest mammals are the primates. Their characteristics are the following: Fingers and toes all armed with nails, the eyes comparatively near together and fully enclosed in a bony case. The cerebrum with well-developed furrows covers the other portions of the brain. There is but one pair of milk-glands, and these on the breast. The differences between hand and foot become most strongly marked by the "anthropoid" apes. These have become accustomed to an upright gait in their climbing; hence the feet are used for supporting the body and the hands for grasping. Both thumb and great toe are opposable; but the foot is a true foot, and the hand a true hand, in anatomical structure. The face, hands, and feet have mainly lost the covering of hair. They have no tail, or rather its rudiments are concealed beneath the skin. These include the gibbon, the orang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee.

We can sum up the few attainments of mammals in a line. The lower forms attained the placental mode of embryonic development; the higher attained upright gait, hands and feet, and a great increase of brain. Anatomically considered these were but trifles, but the addition of these trifles revolutionized life on the globe. The principal anatomical differences between man and the anthropoid ape are the following: Man is a strictly erect animal. The foot of the ape is less fitted for walking on the ground, where he usually "goes on all fours." The skull is almost balanced on the condyles by which it articulates with the neck, and has but slight tendency to tip forward. The facial portion, nose and jaws, is less developed and retracted beneath the larger cranium or brain-case. This has greatly changed the appearance of the head. Protruding jaws and chin, even when combined with large cranium and brain, always give man the appearance of brutality and low intelligence.

The pelvis is broad and comparatively shallow. The legs, especially the thighs, are long. The foot is long and strong, and rests its lower surface, not merely the outer margin as in apes, on the ground. The elastic arch of the instep must be excepted in the above description, and adds lightness and swiftness to his otherwise slow gait. The great toe is short and generally not opposable. The muscles of the leg are heavy and the knee-joint has a very broad articulating surface. But the great result of man's erect posture is that the hand is set free from the work of locomotion, and has become a delicate tactile and tool-using organ. The importance of this change we cannot over-estimate. The hand was the servant of the brain for trying all experiments. Had not our arboreal ancestors developed the hand for us we could never have invented tools nor used them if invented. And its reflex influence in developing the brain has been enormous. The arm is shorter and the hand smaller. The brain is absolutely and relatively large, and its surface greatly convoluted. This gives place for a large amount of "gray matter," whose functions are perception, thought, and will. For this gray matter forms a layer on the outside of the brain.

Thus, even anatomically, man differs from the anthropoid apes. His whole structure is moulded to and by the higher mental powers, so that he is the "Anthropos" of the old Greek philosophers, the being who "turns his face upward." Yet in all these anatomical respects some of the apes differ less from him than from the lower apes or "half apes." And every one of these can easily be explained as the result of progressive development and modification. Whoever will deny the possibility or probability of man's development from some lower form must argue on psychological, not on anatomical, grounds; and it grows clearer every day that even the former but poorly justify such a denial.

But it is interesting to note that no one ape most closely approaches man in all anatomical respects. Thus among the anthropoids the orang is perhaps most similar to man in cerebral structure, the chimpanzee in form of skull, the gorilla in feet and hands. No evolutionist would claim that any existing ape represents the ancestor of man. The anthropoids represent very probably the culmination of at least three distinct lines of development. But we must remember that in early tertiary times apes occurred all over Europe, and probably Asia, many degrees farther north than now. In those days, as later, the fauna and flora of northern climates were superior in vigor and height of development to that of Africa or Australia. It is thus, to say the least, not at all improbable that there existed in those times apes considerably, if not far, superior to any surviving forms. Whether the palaeontologist will find for us remains of such anthropoids is still to be seen.

But you will naturally ask, "Is there not, after all, a vast difference between the brain of man and that of the ape?" Let us examine this question as fully as our very brief time will allow. Considerable emphasis used to be laid on the facial angle between a line drawn parallel to the base of the skull and one obliquely vertical touching the teeth and most prominent portion of the forehead. Now this angle is in man very large—from seventy-five to eighty-five degrees, or even more, and rarely falling below sixty-five degrees. But this angle depends largely on the protrusion of the jaws, and varies greatly in species of animals showing much the same grade of intelligence. In some not especially intelligent South American monkeys the facial angle amounts to about sixty-five degrees. In this respect the skull of a chimpanzee reminds us of a human skull of small cranial capacity and large jaws, in which the cranium has been pressed back and the jaws crowded forward and slightly upward.

The weight of the brain in proportion to that of the body has been considered as of great importance, and within certain limits this is undoubtedly correct. Thus, according to Leuret, the weight of the brain is to that of the whole body: In fish, 1:5,668; in reptiles, 1:1,320; in birds, 1:212; in mammals, 1:186. These figures give the averages of large numbers of observations and have a certain amount of value. But within the same class the ratio varies extraordinarily. Thus the weight of the brain is to that of the whole body: In the elephant, 1:500; in the largest dogs, 1:305; in the cat, 1:156; in the rat, 1:76; in the chimpanzee, 1:50; in man, 1:36; in the field-mouse, 1:31; in the goldfinch, 1:24.

From this series it is evident that the relative weight of the brain is no index of the intelligence of the animal. Indeed if the brain were purely an organ of mind, there is no reason that it should be any larger in an elephant than in a mouse, provided they had the same mental capacity. As animals grow larger the weight of the brain, relatively to that of the body, decreases, and considering the size of man it is remarkable that it should form so large a fraction of his weight. Still the fraction in the chimpanzee is not so much smaller. It is still possible that this fraction is above the normal for the chimpanzee, for some of the observations may have been taken on animals which had died of consumption or some other wasting disease. I have not been able to find whether this possibility of error has been scrupulously avoided.

A fair idea of the size of the brain may be obtained by measuring the cranial capacity. This varies in man from almost one-hundred cubic inches to less than seventy. In the gorilla its average is perhaps thirty, in the orang and chimpanzee rather less, about twenty-eight. This is certainly a vast difference, especially when we remember that the gorilla far exceeds man in weight.

Le Bon tells us that of a series of skulls forty-five per cent, of the Australian had a cranial capacity of 1,200 to 1,300 c.c., while 46.7 per cent. of modern Parisian skulls showed a capacity of between 1,500 and 1,600 c.c. The skull of the gorilla contains about five hundred and seventy cubic centimetres. Broca found that the cranial capacity of 115 Parisian skulls, of probably the higher classes from the twelfth century, averaged about 1,426 cubic centimetres, while ninety of those of the poorer classes of the nineteenth century averaged about 1,484. His observations seemed to prove that there has been a steady increase in Parisian cranial capacity from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.

Turning to the actual weight of the brain, that of Cuvier weighed 64.5 ounces, and a few cases of weights exceeding 65 ounces have been recorded. The lowest limit of weight in a normal human brain has not yet been accurately determined. From 34 to 31 ounces have been assigned by different writers. The brain of a Bush woman was computed by Marshall at 31.5 ounces, and weights of even 31 ounces have been recorded without any note to show that the possessors were especially lacking in intelligence. As Professor Huxley says in his "Man's Place in Nature," a little book which I cannot too highly recommend to you all, "It may be doubted whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than 31 or 32 ounces, or that the heaviest gorilla brain has ever exceeded 20 ounces. The difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest men is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. The latter, as has been seen, is represented by 12 ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by 32:20 relatively. But as the largest recorded human brain weighed between 65 and 66 ounces, the former difference is represented by 33 ounces absolutely, or by 65:32 relatively."

But there is another characteristic of the brain which seems to bear a close relation to the degree of intelligence. The surface of the human brain is not smooth but covered with convolutions, with alternating grooves or sulci, which vastly increase its surface and thus make room for more gray matter. Says Gratiolett: "On comparing a series of human and simian brains we are immediately struck with the analogy exhibited in the cerebral forms in all these creatures. There is a cerebral form peculiar to man and the apes; and so in the cerebral convolutions, wherever they appear, there is a general unity of arrangement, a plan, the type of which is common to all these creatures." Professor Huxley says: "It is most remarkable that, as soon as all the principal sulci appear, the pattern according to which they are arranged is identical with the corresponding sulci in man. The surface of the brain of the monkey exhibits a sort of skeleton map of man's, and in the man-like apes the details become more and more filled in, until it is only in minor characters that the chimpanzee's or orang's brain can be structurally distinguished from man's."