The tadpole18 and the ascidian larva divide between them the honour of preserving for us in all its native simplicity the primitive20 aspect of the vertebrate type. Beasts, birds, reptiles22, and fishes have all descended23 from an animal whose shape closely resembled that of these wriggling24 little black creatures which dart25 up and down like imps26 through the clear water, and raise a cloud of mud above their heads each time that they bury themselves comfortably in the soft mud of the bottom. But while the birds and beasts, on the one hand, have gone on bettering themselves out of all knowledge, and while the ascidian, on the other hand, in his adult form has dropped back into an obscure and sedentary life—sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything—the tadpole alone, at least during its early days, remains27 true to the ancestral traditions of the vertebrate family. When first it emerges from its egg it represents the very most rudimentary animal with a backbone28 known to our scientific teachers. It has a big hammer-looking head, and a set of branching outside gills, and a short distinct body, and a long semi-transparent29 tail. Its backbone is a mere30 gristly channel, in which lies its spinal31 cord. As it grows, it resembles in every particular the ascidian larva, with which, indeed, Kowalewsky and Professor Ray Lankester have demonstrated its essential identity. But since a great many people seem wrongly to imagine that Professor Lankester's opinion on this matter is in some way at variance32 with Mr. Darwin's and Dr. Haeckel's, it may be well to consider what the degeneracy of the ascidian really means. The fact is, both larval forms—that of the frog and that of the ascidian—completely agree in the position of their brains, their gill-slits, their very rudimentary backbones33, and their spinal cords. Moreover, we ourselves and the tadpole agree with the ascidian in a further most important point, which no invertebrate34 animal shares with us; and that is that our eyes grow out of our brains, instead of being part of our skin, as in insects and cuttle-fish. This would seem à priori a most inconvenient35 place for an eye—inside the brain; but then, as Professor Lankester cleverly suggests, our common original ancestor, the very earliest vertebrate of all, must have been a transparent creature, and therefore comparatively indifferent as to the part of his body in which his eye happened to be placed. In after ages, however, as vertebrates generally got to have thicker skulls36 and tougher skins, the eye-bearing part of the brain had to grow outward, and so reach the light on the surface of the body: a thing which actually happens to all birds, beasts, and reptiles in the course of their embryonic37 development. So that in this respect the ascidian larva is nearer to the original type than the tadpole or any other existing animal.
The ascidian, however, in mature life, has grown degraded and fallen from his high estate, owing to his bad habit of rooting himself to a rock and there settling down into a mere sedentary swallower of passing morsels—a blind, handless, footless, and degenerate38 thing. In his later shape he is but a sack fixed39 to a stone, and with all his limbs and higher sense-organs so completely atrophied40 that only his earlier history allows us to recognise him as a vertebrate by descent at all. He is in fact a representative of retrogressive development. The tadpole, on the contrary, goes on swimming about freely, and keeping the use of its eyes, till at last a pair of hind1 legs and then a pair of fore4 legs begin to bud out from its side, and its tail fades away, and its gills disappear, and air-breathing lungs take their place, and it boldly hops41 on shore a fully evolved tailless amphibian.
There is, however, one interesting question about these two larv? which I should much like to solve. The ascidian has only one eye inside its useless brain, while the tadpole and all other vertebrates have two from the very first. Now which of us most nearly represents the old mud-loving vertebrate ancestor in this respect? Have two original organs coalesced42 in the young ascidian, or has one organ split up into a couple with the rest of the class? I think the latter is the true supposition, and for this reason: In our heads, and those of all vertebrates, there is a curious cross-connection between the eyes and the brain, so that the right optic nerve goes to the left side of the brain and the left optic nerve goes to the right side. In higher animals, this 'decussation,' as anatomists call it, affects all the sense-organs except those of smell; but in fishes it only affects the eyes. Now, as the young ascidian has retained the ancestral position of his almost useless eye so steadily43, it is reasonable to suppose that he has retained its other peculiarities44 as well. May we not conclude, therefore, that the primitive vertebrate had only one brain-eye; but that afterwards, as this brain-eye grew outward to the surface, it split up into two, because of the elongated45 and flattened46 form of the head in swimming animals, while its two halves still kept up a memory of their former union in the cross-connection with the opposite halves of the brain? If this be so, then we might suppose that the other organs followed suit, so as to prevent confusion in the brain between the two sides of the body; while the nose, which stands in the centre of the face, was under no liability to such error, and therefore still keeps up its primitive direct arrangement.
It is worth noting, too, that these tadpoles, like all other very low vertebrates, are mud-haunters; and the most primitive among adult vertebrates are still cartilaginous mud-fish. Not much is known geologically about the predecessors47 of frogs; the tailless amphibians48 are late arrivals upon earth, and it may seem curious, therefore, that they should recall in so many ways the earliest ancestral type. The reason doubtless is because they are so much given to larval development. Some ancestors of theirs—prim21?val newts or salamanders—must have gone on for countless49 centuries improving themselves in their adult shape from age to age, yet bringing all their young into the world from the egg, as mere mud-fish still, in much the same state as their unimproved forefathers50 had done millions of ?ons before. Similarly, caterpillars51 are still all but exact patterns of the prim?val insect, while butterflies are totally different and far higher creatures. Thus, in spite of adult degeneracy in the ascidian and adult progress in the frog, both tadpoles preserve for us very nearly the original form of their earliest backboned ancestor. Each individual recapitulates52 in its own person the whole history of evolution in its race. This is a very lucky thing for biology; since without these recapitulatory53 phases we could never have traced the true lines of descent in many cases. It would be a real misfortune for science if every frog had been born a typical amphibian, as some tree-toads actually are, and if every insect had emerged a fully formed adult, as some aphides very nearly do. Larv? and embryos54 show us the original types of each race; adults show us the total amount of change produced by progressive or retrogressive development.
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1 hind | |
adj.后面的,后部的 | |
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2 fronds | |
n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
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3 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
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4 fore | |
adv.在前面;adj.先前的;在前部的;n.前部 | |
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5 sluices | |
n.水闸( sluice的名词复数 );(用水闸控制的)水;有闸人工水道;漂洗处v.冲洗( sluice的第三人称单数 );(指水)喷涌而出;漂净;给…安装水闸 | |
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6 rustic | |
adj.乡村的,有乡村特色的;n.乡下人,乡巴佬 | |
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7 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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8 utilitarian | |
adj.实用的,功利的 | |
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9 marvel | |
vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异;n.令人惊异的事 | |
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10 behold | |
v.看,注视,看到 | |
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11 illustrating | |
给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 ); 说明; 表明; (用示例、图画等)说明 | |
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12 transformation | |
n.变化;改造;转变 | |
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13 amphibian | |
n.两栖动物;水陆两用飞机和车辆 | |
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14 nay | |
adv.不;n.反对票,投反对票者 | |
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15 relatively | |
adv.比较...地,相对地 | |
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16 swarming | |
密集( swarm的现在分词 ); 云集; 成群地移动; 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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17 tadpoles | |
n.蝌蚪( tadpole的名词复数 ) | |
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18 tadpole | |
n.[动]蝌蚪 | |
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19 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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20 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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21 prim | |
adj.拘泥形式的,一本正经的;n.循规蹈矩,整洁;adv.循规蹈矩地,整洁地 | |
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22 reptiles | |
n.爬行动物,爬虫( reptile的名词复数 ) | |
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23 descended | |
a.为...后裔的,出身于...的 | |
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24 wriggling | |
v.扭动,蠕动,蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 );(使身体某一部位)扭动;耍滑不做,逃避(应做的事等);蠕蠕 | |
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25 dart | |
v.猛冲,投掷;n.飞镖,猛冲 | |
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26 imps | |
n.(故事中的)小恶魔( imp的名词复数 );小魔鬼;小淘气;顽童 | |
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27 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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28 backbone | |
n.脊骨,脊柱,骨干;刚毅,骨气 | |
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29 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
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30 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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31 spinal | |
adj.针的,尖刺的,尖刺状突起的;adj.脊骨的,脊髓的 | |
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32 variance | |
n.矛盾,不同 | |
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33 backbones | |
n.骨干( backbone的名词复数 );脊骨;骨气;脊骨状物 | |
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34 invertebrate | |
n.无脊椎动物 | |
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35 inconvenient | |
adj.不方便的,令人感到麻烦的 | |
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36 skulls | |
颅骨( skull的名词复数 ); 脑袋; 脑子; 脑瓜 | |
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37 embryonic | |
adj.胚胎的 | |
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38 degenerate | |
v.退步,堕落;adj.退步的,堕落的;n.堕落者 | |
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39 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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40 atrophied | |
adj.萎缩的,衰退的v.(使)萎缩,(使)虚脱,(使)衰退( atrophy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41 hops | |
跳上[下]( hop的第三人称单数 ); 单足蹦跳; 齐足(或双足)跳行; 摘葎草花 | |
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42 coalesced | |
v.联合,合并( coalesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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44 peculiarities | |
n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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45 elongated | |
v.延长,加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46 flattened | |
[医](水)平扁的,弄平的 | |
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47 predecessors | |
n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 );前辈;(被取代的)原有事物;前身 | |
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48 amphibians | |
两栖动物( amphibian的名词复数 ); 水陆两用车; 水旱两生植物; 水陆两用飞行器 | |
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49 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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50 forefathers | |
n.祖先,先人;祖先,祖宗( forefather的名词复数 );列祖列宗;前人 | |
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51 caterpillars | |
n.毛虫( caterpillar的名词复数 );履带 | |
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52 recapitulates | |
n.总结,扼要重述( recapitulate的名词复数 )v.总结,扼要重述( recapitulate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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53 recapitulatory | |
adj.概括性的,着重阐述要点的 | |
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54 embryos | |
n.晶胚;胚,胚胎( embryo的名词复数 ) | |
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