ure form. Von
Baer, the German scientist, was the first to note this remarkable and
suggestive fact. He stated it in the following words: "In my possession
are two little embryos, preserved in alcohol, whose names I have
omitted to attach, and at present I am unable to state to what class
they belong. They may be lizards, or small birds, or very young
mammals, so complete is the similarity in the mode of the formation of
the head and trunk in these animals. The extremities, however, are
still absent in these embryos. But even if they had existed in the
earliest stage of their development, we should learn nothing, for the
feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and feet of birds, no less than
the hands and feet of man, all arise from the same fundamental form."

As has been said by Prof. Clodd, "the embryos of all living creatures
epitomize during development the series of changes through which the
ancestral forms passed if their ascent from the simple to the complex;
the higher structures passing through the same stages as the lower
structures up to the point when they are marked off from them, yet
never becoming in detail the form which they represent for the time
being. For example, the embryo of man has at the outset gill-like slits
on each side of the neck, like a fish. These give place to a membrane
like that which supersedes gills in the development of birds and
reptiles; the heart is at first a simple pulsating chamber like that in
worms; the backbone is prolonged into a movable tail; the great toe is
extended, or opposable, like our thumbs, and like the toes of apes; the
body three months before birth is covered all over with hair except on
the palms and soles. At birth the head is relatively larger, and the
arms and legs relatively longer than in the adult; the nose is
bridgeless; both features, with others which need not be detailed,
being distinctly ape-like. Thus does the egg from which man springs, a
structure only one hundred and twenty-fifth of an inch in size,
compress into a few weeks the results of millions of years, and set
before us the history of his development from fish-like and reptilian
forms, and of his more immediate descent from a hairy, tailed
quadruped. That which is individual or peculiar to him, the physical
and mental character inherited, is left to the slower development which
follows birth."

This, then, in brief is the Western theory of Evolution--the Physical
Ascent of Man. We have