f their view
to a large consensus of opinion; and if truth were to be decided by
weighing the one consensus against the other, with "Genesis" in the
one scale and "The Origin of Species" in the other, it might perhaps be
found, when the scales were finally trimmed, that the balance hung very
even between creation and evolution.

X. THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN ON THE STUDY OF ANIMAL EMBRYOLOGY. By A.
Sedgwick, M.A., F.R.S.

Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the University of
Cambridge.

The publication of "The Origin of Species" ushered in a new era in the
study of Embryology. Whereas, before the year 1859 the facts of anatomy
and development were loosely held together by the theory of types, which
owed its origin to the great anatomists of the preceding generation,
to Cuvier, L. Agassiz, J. Muller, and R. Owen, they were now combined
together into one organic whole by the theory of descent and by the
hypothesis of recapitulation which was deduced from that theory. The
view (First clearly enunciated by Fritz Muller in his well-known work,
"Fur Darwin", Leipzig, 1864; (English Edition, "Facts for Darwin",
1869).) that a knowledge of embryonic and larval histories would lay
bare the secrets of race-history and enable the course of evolution
to be traced, and so lead to the discovery of the natural system of
classification, gave a powerful stimulus to morphological study in
general and to embryological investigation in particular. In Darwin's
words: "Embryology rises greatly in interest, when we look at the embryo
as a picture, more or less obscured, of the progenitor, either in its
adult or larval state, of all the members of the same great class."
("Origin" (6th edition), page 396.) In the period under consideration
the output of embryological work has been enormous. No group of the
animal kingdom has escaped exhaustive examination and no effort has been
spared to obtain the embryos of isolated and out of the way forms, the
development of which might have an important bearing upon questions
of phylogeny and classification. Marine zoological stations have been
established, expeditions have been sent to distant countries, and the
methods of investigation have been greatly improved. The result of this
activity has been that the main features of the developmental history
of all the most important animals are now known and the curiosity as to
developmental processes, so greatly excited by the promulgation of