The remaining task is to build up the complex frame of the higher animals—always showing the identity of the process (on which the evolutionary argument depends) in enormously different conditions of embryonic life—out of the four “germinal layers.” Chapter IX prepares us for the work by giving us a very clear account of the essential structure of the back-boned (vertebrate) animal, and the probable common ancestor of all the vertebrates (a small fish of the lancelet type). Chapters XI–XIV then carry out the construction step by step. The work is now simpler, in the sense that we leave all the invertebrate animals out of account; but there are so many organs to be fashioned out of the four simple layers that the reader must proceed carefully. In the second volume each of these organs will be dealt with separately, and the parallel will be worked out between its embryonic and its phylogenetic (evolutionary) development. The general reader may wait for this for a full understanding. But in the meantime the wonderful story of the construction of all our organs in the course of a few weeks (the human frame is perfectly formed, though less than two inches in length, by the twelfth week) from so simple a material is full of interest. It would be useless to attempt to summarise the process. The four chapters are themselves but a summary of it, and the eighty fine illustrations of the process will make it sufficiently clear. The last chapter carries the story on to the point where man at last parts company with the anthropoid ape, and gives a full account of the membranes or wrappers that enfold him in the womb, and the connection with the mother.
In conclusion, I would urge the reader to consult, at his free library perhaps, the complete edition of this work, when he has read the present abbreviated edition. Much of the text has had to be condensed in order to bring out the work at our popular price, and the beautiful plates of the complete edition have had to be omitted. The reader will find it an immense assistance if he can consult the library edition.
HAECKEL’S CLASSIFICATION OF THE ANIMAL WORLD
Unicellular animals (Protozoa) 1. Unnucleated Bacteria Protamæbæ Monera 2. Nucleated _a._ Rhizopoda Amœbina Radiolaria _b._ Infusoria Flagellata Ciliata 3. Cell-colonies Catallacta Blastæada