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The transitional formation between the two classes is so pronounced in the whole organisation of these remarkable animals that zoologists had a lively controversy over the question whether they were really fishes or amphibia. Several distinguished zoologists classed them with the amphibia, though most now associate them with the fishes.
It is no part of the purpose of the present paper to dwell upon much vexed questions of specific distinctness, and it will only be pointed out here that the ultimate validity of most of these supposed forms will depend chiefly upon the exactness of the conception of species which will replace among zoologists the vague ideas of the present time.
Yet "crabs or lobsters, worms, cuttle-fish, snails, jelly-fish, star-fish, oysters, the polyps lived contemporaneously with the first known vertebrate animals that ever came into being all as clearly defined by unmistakable ordinal or special characters as they are at the present moment." The foot of the horse is considered by zoölogists as "one of the most beautiful contrivances in nature."
In fact, zoologists and botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of indefinite and endless modification.
Here too are those curious snakes which are equally thick at either end a peculiarity which has earned for them the appellation of double-headed, and the supposed power of walking indifferently forwards or backwards. The visitor now approaches the called by zoologists after the Greek name, Batrachia.
Skeleton of gorilla's hand. Skeleton of human hand, back. This famous vertebral theory of the skull has interested the most distinguished zoologists for more than a century: the chief representatives of comparative anatomy have devoted their highest powers to the solution of the problem, and the interest has spread far beyond their circle.
In this same neighborhood is also the main part of the Philippine Bureau of Science, where trained chemists, geologists, botanists, zoologists, bacteriologists, engineers, and other scientific experts are engaged in numerous lines of investigation of importance to the welfare of the islands.
So familiar is this belief to people of professedly higher culture than the countryman, that the transformation just alluded to has to all, save a few thinking persons and zoölogists, become a matter of the most commonplace kind.
Sociability that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like the love of society for society's sake, combined with the "joy of life," only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.
Notwithstanding the numerous objections we have raised against Mr. Darwin's theory, we do not declare ourselves hostile to a system of which zoölogists are the only competent judges. We are neither for nor against the transmutation of species, neither for nor against the principle of natural selection.
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