Volume 1

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex / by Charles Darwin.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The descent of man and selection in relation to sex / by Charles Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    37/536 (page 13)
    / Chap. I. HOMOLOGICAL STRUCTUEES. 13 ment, carefully copied from two works of undoubted accuracy.-^^ After the foregoing statements made by such high authorities, it would be superfluous on my part to give a number of borrowed details, shewing that the embryo of man closely resembles that of other mammals. It may, however, be added, that the human embryo like- wise resembles certain low forms when adult in various points of structure. For instance, the heart at first exists as a simple pulsating vessel; the excreta are voided through a cloacal passage; and the os coccyx projects like a true tail, extending considerably beyond the rudimentary legs.^*^ In the embryos of all air-breathing vertebrates, certain glands, called the corpora Wolffiana, correspond with, and act like the kidneys of mature fishes. Even at a later embryonic period, some striking resemblances between man and the lower animals may he observed. Bischoff says that the convolutions of the brain in a human foetus at the end of the seventh month reach about the same stage of development as in a baboon when adult. The great toe, as Professor Owen remarks,^^ which ^];he human embryo (upper these tigures by Prof. Huxlev fi. 9' Ti • 1^ Nature,' the idea of giving fig. 2. ihis embryo was ten them was taken. Hackel has hnes m length, so that the draw- also given analogous drawing mg ,s much magnified. The in his-Schopfun|sgesch cht?' embryo of the dog is from is Prof Wvman in ' P,nl\/ ^l\f'. ;Entwicklungsge- American of Sd nces' schichte des Hunde-Eies,' 1845, vol. iv 1860 n 17 removed. I was directed to ■ L-'^'^0.