Category: Science - Biology

Initiative in Evolution

Upward--still upward--still upward to the highest! Such is the claim of modern man for the story of himself and the lower inhabitants of the globe. The zoologists have gone so far as to confer upon him the surname Sapiens--Homo Sapiens. Learned indeed he is, and heir of all th...

Chapters

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Assuming the foregoing origin of the innervation of the skin, I submit that between this rudimentary process and the building of sensori-motor arcs in the spinal cord and brain...

22. CHAPTER XXII.

A work of great value to the biologist has been written by one whose work has led him in the widening path of human physiology and its very title is instinct with meaning. The I...

2. CHAPTER II.

The modern story of the theory of organic evolution shows certain important dates--1859, 1880, 1894, 1895, 1899 and 1909. These begin with the _Origin of Species_ and end with t...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

Passing now to the smaller trenches of the front line I have chosen as the first of them a small study of the varieties of epidermis found in mammals. With the exception of aqua...

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

For at least seventy years the surface of the human skin has been the subject of so much physiological observation and experiment that Professor Sherrington considers the litera...

20. CHAPTER XX.

A bursa exercises a function in the animal body which is the direct opposite of that shown to belong to the flexures of the hand and foot. Whereas the latter are adapted to the...

6. CHAPTER VI.

The singular arrangement of hair on the forearm of man is the subject of some curious statements by Darwin, Wallace and Romanes, and these suggested to me twenty years ago the f...

15. CHAPTER XV.

About ten years ago I began an investigation into the results of the application by man to the domestic horse of various forms of harness, desiring to find out if these results...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

In spite of the satires of Swift we may not cavil at the natural pride which has led man, Homo Sapiens, as he also calls himself, to confer boldly on himself, and his lineal anc...

9. CHAPTER IX.

The Ungulate order has been variously divided by zoologists, and is still said to be composed of two main sections, even-toed and odd-toed Ungulates, with the addition of a good...

21. CHAPTER XXI.

The principle of Lyell cannot be applied to this section of my subject for it is unique in the animal world. There is here a simple compilation of facts such as the medical scho...

3. CHAPTER III.

In his classical work on Heredity, Professor J. Arthur Thomson exhausts the evidence on Lamarckism available then (1908) in a manner worthy of the summing-up of an English judge...

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

The subjects of the preceding, present, and the succeeding chapter are closely allied, from the fact that they all deal with structural changes in the mammalian skin, and that m...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

It might seem unnecessary to most persons who are good enough to follow this inquiry that the question asked above should receive an explicit answer. We all know, of course, how...

4. CHAPTER IV.

The present chapter is on _a priori_ lines and will perhaps be dismissed with a wave of the hand or hurriedly skimmed over, but I pray the reader at least to read the two or thr...

1. CHAPTER I.

Upward--still upward--still upward to the highest! Such is the claim of modern man for the story of himself and the lower inhabitants of the globe. The zoologists have gone so f...

7. CHAPTER VII.

Some attention must here be given to the supposed mode of formation of individual patterns of hair, that is to say, their evolution. So here one has to move among the fields of...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

In this chapter a few of the rarer examples of hair-clad mammals which present remarkable changes at critical areas of their hairy coats may be considered with advantage. I have...

10. CHAPTER X.

The even-toed section of hoofed animals is a much larger group than the odd-toed, and the difference may be illustrated by looking at the great work on Natural History by Lydekk...

11. CHAPTER XI.

Another large and important order of hair-clad mammals must now be considered, and the same course as in the case of the ungulates will be followed; the two leading families of...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

A large body of facts and an adequate proportion of reasoning have been brought together in the preceding chapters. As far as I understand the proceedings in a court of law, the...

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Those flexures of the palmar and plantar skin which are called by Galton chiromantic creases, and said by him to be no more significant to others than palmists than the creases...

12. CHAPTER XII.

Among the canidæ one is able to select a type with whose habits of life we are more familiar than any other, Canis Familiaris, as he is affectionately called, the companion of m...

5. CHAPTER V.

In a matter of scientific inquiry one cannot go far wrong if one follows the advice of Henri Poincaré, who lays down certain principles of method; four of these are the followin...