Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/355

Rh In 1868 I had the honor of bringing under your notice, in this theatre, the results of investigations made, up to that time, into the anatomical characters of certain ancient reptiles, which showed the nature of the modifications in virtue of which the type of the quadrupedal reptile passed into that of the bipedal bird; and abundant confirmatory evidence of the justice of the conclusions which I then laid before you has since come to light.

In 1875 the discovery of the toothed birds of the cretaceous formation in North America, by Professor Marsh, completed the series of transitional forms between birds and reptiles, and removed Mr. Darwin's proposition, that "many animal forms of life have been utterly lost, through which the early progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other vertebrate classes," from the region of hypothesis to that of demonstrable fact.

In 1859 there appeared to be a very sharp and clear hiatus between vertebrated and invertebrated animals, not only in their structure, but what was more important, in their development. I do not think that we even yet know the precise links of connection between the two; but the investigations of Kowalewsky and others upon the development of Amphioxus and of the Tunicata prove beyond a doubt that the differences which were supposed to constitute a barrier between the two are non-existent. There is no longer any difficulty in understanding how the vertebrate type may have arisen from the invertebrate, though the full proof of the manner in which the transition was actually effected may still be lacking.

Again, in 1859 there appeared to be a no less sharp separation between the two great groups of flowering and flowerless plants. It is only subsequently that the series of remarkable investigations inaugurated by Hofmeister has brought to light the extraordinary and altogether unexpected modifications of the reproductive apparatus in the Lycopodiaceæ, the Rhizocarpeæ, and the Gymnospermeæ, by which the ferns and the mosses are gradually connected with the Phanerogamic division of the vegetable world.

So, again, it is only since 1859 that we have acquired that wealth of knowledge of the lowest forms of life which demonstrates the futility of any attempt to separate the lowest plants from the lowest animals, and shows that the two kingdoms of living nature have a common border-land which belongs to both or to neither.

Thus it will be observed that the whole tendency of biological investigation since 1859 has been in the direction of removing the difficulties which the apparent breaks in the series created at that time; and the recognition of gradation is the first step toward the acceptance of evolution.

As another great factor in bringing about the change of opinion which has taken place among naturalists, I count the astonishing progress which has been made in the study of embryology. Twenty