Darwin made easy / by Edward B. Aveling.

  • Edward Aveling
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwin made easy / by Edward B. Aveling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/156 page 8
    into the interior of the human being’s body are the visceral or branchial clefts. In this stage of development the embryo of man is there- fore, as far as this region of his body is concerned, identical in structure with that of a fish. The visceral arches are the same as those that support in the fish the gills of the fish. These arches become in one or two cases part of the adult skeleton ; in others they never enter into that skeleton. Thu* the first visceral arch becomes on each side half of the lower jaw, and at the end of it, nearer to the skull, forms one of the bones of the inner ear. The second and third visceral arches make up the cornua and body of the hyoid bone. The rest become obliterated as arch-structures. As to the clefts, through which in the fish passes water that has been taken into the mouth for breathing purposes, they are in man all closed up completely at a comparatively early time. It is im- possille to avoid the conclusion that this remarkable series of arches and the intervening clefts represent in their transitory appearance in the human animal the more permanent condi- tion in a piscine ancestor of man. 3. The teeth.—The whole of the history of the teeth of the Primates (the mammalian order to which man, the anthropoid apes, the baboons, the spider monkey, the lemurs, etc., belong) is so much evidence in favor of the origin of man from some lower form. We can only take the case of the wisdom teeth. These are the four last teeth in position and in date of appearance. They are at the back of the upper and lower jaws on each side. As to their time of appearance, they may appear between the age of seventeen and that of twenty- five, or they may not appear at all. Coming comparatively late in life they generally, like Charles Lamb, make up for this by leaving early. They are really useless, placed so far back in the mouth, and very soon become lost in certain cases. In many people they are either not all four cut, or even not one of them appears. Thus the present writer has only cut 1-5 of his wisdom teeth, and he is assured by dentist friends that it is not an unusual thing for none of the four wisdom teeth to emerge. What is the significance of these wisdom teeth ? If man is made in the image of god, are we to believe that—does not the whole wickedness and absurdity of the doctrine come out at the supposition ? But if we look at the shape of the jaws of man and of the Simian Primates
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3