DARWIN'S DESCENT OF MAN.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3197, 12 May 1871, Page 3

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 pedigree hunters compared with Mr Darwin? The author of " Descent of Man" takes us through hundreds and hundreds of ages, till we can no longer give any account of time, and introduces us to our ancestry — a group of marine animals. He says : "By considering the embryological structure of man — the homologies which he presents with the lower animals — the rudiments which he retains — and the reversions to which he 18 liable, we can partly recall in imagU nation the former condition of our early progenitors, and can approximately place them in their proper position in the zoological series. We learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably 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 amongst the Quadrumana, as surely as would the common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms either from some reptile-like or some amphibianlike creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the pa6t, we can see that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchia), 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 sems to have been more like the larval of our existing marine Ascidians than

any other known form. ... In regard to bodily size tnd {strength, we do not know whether man is descended from some comparatively small species, like the 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 Darwiu says : — " The main conclusion arrived jat 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 decended from that heroic little monkey who braved its dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in trinmph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs — as from a savage who delights to torture liis enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."