Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"All the Animals of each class are formed on the same plan....

"Why should the animals of one class (such as the vertebrate or back-boned class) be formed all on one plan, even to the most minute bones; so that the wing of a bat, the front leg of a horse, the hand of a man, and the flapper of a porpoise, are all made of the same bones, which have either grown together, or lengthened and spread apart, according to the purpose they serve? And, more curious still, why should some animals have parts which are of no use to them, but only seem to be there because other animals of the same class also have them? Thus the whale has teeth like the other mammalia, but they never pierce through the gum; and the boa-constrictor has the beginnings of hind legs, hidden under its skin, though they never grow out. Here, again, it seems extraordinary, if a boa-constrictor and a whale were created separately, that they should be made with organs which are quite useless; while, on the other hand, if they were descended from the same ancestor, as other reptiles and mammalia who have teeth and hind legs, they might be supposed to have inherited these organs....

"Embryos of animals alike in Structure.

"Another still more remarkable fact was that pointed out by Von Baer, that the higher animals, such as quadrupeds, before they are perfectly formed, cannot be distinguished from the embryos of other and lower animals, such as fish and reptiles. If animals were created separately, why should a dog begin like a fish, a lizard, and a bird, and have at first parts which it loses as it grows into its own peculiar form?

"Living animals of a country agree with the fossil ones....

"We know that certain animals are only found in particular countries; kangaroos and pouched animals, for example, in Australia, and sloths and armadillos in South America. Now, it is remarkable that all the fossil quadrupeds in Australia are also pouched animals, though they are of different kinds and larger in size than those now living; and in the same way different species of sloth and armadillos are found fossil in South America; while in the rocks of Europe fossil mammalia are found, only slightly different from those which are living there now." It seems natural to conclude that the living have descended from the fossils.

The study of the rocks has produced other "missing links" in the succession of animal life. Professor Huxley, in some lectures given in New York in 1876, described the Hesperornis, found in the western rocks,—a huge bird, five or six feet in length, with teeth like a reptile. In England a fossil reptile has been found, the Archæopteryx, having a reptile-like tail, with a fringe of feathers on each side, and teeth, "occupying a midway place between a bird and a reptile." Flying reptiles have been found, and reptiles which walked on their hind legs. Those who have visited Yale and Amherst Colleges must have seen the huge bird-tracks or reptile foot-prints taken from the rocks in the Connecticut valley.

Professor Huxley showed the probable descent of the horse with its hoofed foot from the extinct three-toed Hipparion of Europe, and that from the four-toed Orohippus of the Eocene formation. He declared it probable that a five-toed horse would be found, and Professor Marsh, in the West, has found the Eohippus, corresponding very nearly to Professor Huxley's description.

The question among naturalists was, "How can plants and animals have become thus changed?" Darwin showed how it was possible to effect most of these changes by "natural selection," or the choosing of the best to survive in the struggle for existence. As man by grafting secures the finest fruit, and by care in animal life the swiftest horses for speed as well as the strongest for labor, so nature selects her best for the higher development of the race.

Darwin says, "There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and, at this rate, in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.... The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years, there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair."