Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/278

274 surroundings if they are to survive. As a result of this pressing necessity many larvae and even embryos are so profoundly modified in adaptive ways that their ancestral characters are largely obscured. Various larval or fetal organs commonly furnish the outstanding characteristics of developmental histories, and these purely temporary organs not only tell no story of ancestries, but frequently so mask the ancestral story as to make it almost indecipherable. In the third place, different systems of organs develop at different rates, so that when one system has reached an advanced state of differentiation another system may be still in the primordial state. Thus, in the development of fishes the nervous system is far along its course of development before the circulatory system has even begun to differentiate. At such a stage as this the embryo is obviously not equivalent to any adult ancestor, for an organism with so discordant an organization could not survive.

In spite of its faults and limitations, however, the idea that ontogony tends to repeat phylogeny, if used intelligently and not over-applied, is a very useful one. Organisms inherit not only their adult characters from their ancestors, but also their general development patterns. It is therefore inevitable that many features that have been outgrown or subordinated in modern types should be found in a state more nearly ancestral during the embryonic stages. And especially is this the case when particular systems are studied separately. Thus, we find that the human circulatory system develops through a series of stages that are much like the adult conditions of a series of ascending vertebrate classes.

The heart differentiates from a sheet of mesoderm lying beneath the pharynx. It has at first the form of two nearly straight tubes, which soon fuse for part of their length to form a single tube divided at the two ends into two tubes. Later the single tube differentiates lengthwise into two cavities, the auricle and the ventricle, and is now in the stage equivalent to that of an adult fish. The auricle next divides into two chambers, thus resembling that of an amphibian. Finally the ventricle subdivides also, giving rise to the four-chambered heart characteristics of mammals. The main arteries and veins of the head region are at first laid down with reference to what are known as the bronchial arches, the structural framework of the bronchial or gill apparatus of aquatic vertebrates. Later, the whole architecture of this system becomes profoundly modified in adaptation for lung respiration. While the arteries and veins are in the fish-like condition there appear at the anterior end of the body in the prospective neck region four pairs of crevices, gill slits, which in fishes open directly into the pharynx and furnish a surface for gills. In the human embryo, however, these clefts never break through, but, after persisting for some time without playing any useful role, gradually disappear. The only persistent residue of the gill slits is the Eustacean tube, which connects the pharynx with the middle ear. Never at any time do the gill slits function in a respiratory capacity, for they never possess any bronchial tissue. Only one interpretation of these transitory gill slits of man can be seriously entertained, namely, that, although these structures are inherited from the early aquatic ancestry, adaptive demands have caused their suppression in favor of more useful structures. Inheritance causes their appearance; lack of function prevents their development and causes their disappearance or modification.

Nothing is to be gained by a multiplication of parallelisms such as the above. Suffice it to say that the nervous system, the alimentary system, the uregential system and other systems go through stages similar to those described above and that these resemble adult stages of lower classes of vertebrates. The embryology of man is now pretty thoroughly known in spite of the great difficulty of obtaining the early stages. Step for step it is almost precisely like that of other primates, especially like that of the anthropoids, and it is only in the latest stages that it takes on