We shall never, probably, disentangle the
inextricable web of the affinities between the members of any one class;
but when we have a distinct object in view, and do not look to some unknown
plan of creation, we may hope to make sure but slow progress.
Professor Haeckel in his "Generelle Morphologie" and in another works, has
recently brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls
phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings. In drawing up
the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological characters, but
receives aid from homologous and rudimentary organs, as well as from the
successive periods at which the various forms of life are believed to have
first appeared in our geological formations. He has thus boldly made a
great beginning, and shows us how classification will in the future be
treated.
MORPHOLOGY.
We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of their
habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their
organisation. This resemblance is often expressed by the term "unity of
type;" or by saying that the several parts and organs in the different
species of the class are homologous. The whole subject is included under
the general term of Morphology. This is one of the most interesting
departments of natural history, and may almost be said to be its very soul.
What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping,
that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the
porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same
pattern, and should include similar bones, in the same relative positions?
How curious it is, to give a subordinate though striking instance, that the
hind feet of the kangaroo, which are so well fitted for bounding over the
open plains--those of the climbing, leaf-eating koala, equally well fitted
for grasping the branches of trees--those of the ground-dwelling, insect or
root-eating, bandicoots--and those of some other Australian marsupials--
should all be constructed on the same extraordinary type, namely with the
bones of the second and third digits extremely slender and enveloped within
the same skin, so that they appear like a single toe furnished with two
claws.
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