Such are the more salient points of Dr. Calori's paper, a translation of which I have thought it better to lay before the reader. There remains no longer any necessity to discuss the question whether this amphibia is a larval form; but still there is much to be done in reference to its organs of respiration in its early life. From finding the lungs in the young axolotl in a complete state of acatylectesis, while the tissue is be; utifully developed in those of adult form, I am led to believe that branchial respiration is that of youug life, while the older animal becomes as equally dependent for respiration on its lungs.
IX.—On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals. By Professor Huxley, F. R. S.
As the biological sciences have grown in breadth and in depth, and as successive generations of naturalists have succeeded in penetrating further and further into the arcana of nature, the questions—In what relation does the thinker and investigator stand to the objects of his inquiries? What is the tie which connects man with other animated and sentient beings?—have more and more forcibly pressed for a reply.
Nor have responses been wanting; but, unfortunately, they have been diametrically opposed to one another. Theologians and moralists, historians and poets, impressed by a sense of the infinite responsibilities of mankind, awed by a just prevision of the great destinies in store for the only earthly being of practically unlimited powers, or touched by the tragic dignity of the ever-recurring struggle of human will with circumstance, have always tended to conceive of their kind as something apart, separated by a great and impassable barrier, from the rest of the natural world.
On the other hand, the students of physical science, discovering as complete a system of law and order in the microcosm as in the macrocosm, incessantly lighting upon new analogies and new identities between life as manifested by man, and life in other shapes,—have no less steadily gravitated towards the opposite opinion, and, as knowledge has advanced, have more. and more distinctly admitted the closeness of the bond which unites man with his humbler fellows.
A controversy has raged between these opposed schools, and, as usual, passion and prejudice have conferred upon the battle far more importance than, as it seems to me, can rationally attach to its issue. For whether, as some think, man is, by his origin, distinct from all other living beings, or whether, on the other hand, as others suppose, he is the result of the modification of some other mammal, his duties and his aspirations must, I apprehend, remain the same. The proof of his claim to independent parentage will not change the brutishness of man's lower nature; nor, except to those valet souls who cannot see greatness in their fellow because his father was a cobbler, will the demonstration of a pithecoid pedigree one whit diminish man's divine
