Darwin's "Descent of Man."

Cromwell Argus, Volume 2, Issue 88, 18 July 1871, Page 6

Darwin's "Descent of Man."

"Descended from the Conqueror" sounds well in many ears ; it is more than eight hundred years ago. But what are Garter King-at-arms or Sir Bernard Burke as pedigreehunters compared with Mr Darwin ? The author of '' Descent of Man" takes us through hundreds and hundreds of ages, and introduces us to our ancestry—a group of marine animals. He says, "By considering the embryological structure of man—the homoligies which he presents with the lower animals, the rudiments which he retains, and the reversions to which he is liable, we can partly recall in imagination the former condition of our early progenitors, and can approximately place them in then- proper position in the zoological series. We learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, and arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the Quadramana, as. surely as would the common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadramana and all higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and through a long line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fiah-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past, we can see that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchse. with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. This animal seems to have been more like the lame of our existing marine Ascidians than any other known form. . In regard to bodily size and strength, we do not know whether man is descended from some comparatively small species, like chimpanzee, or from one as powerful as the gorilla, and therefore we cannot say whether man has become larger and stronger or smaller and weaker, in comparison with his progenitors." At the end of his work Mr Darwin says :—" The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely, that man is descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved its dreaded enemy in order to save the life of its keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished clogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sajvificos, practices infanticide without remorse—knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."