dance, and the noisy mirth, and the fleering jollity which forms, as the reader has perhaps observed, the established end of an entremes. Cervantes, like Dryden, had his Dalilahs of the stage, and these conclusions were of them. But he managed generally to keep clear of the final cudgelling, which he expressly condemns, not only in the Grand Sultana, but by a passage in his novel of the "Colloquy of the Two Dogs," in which Berganza, one of the dogs, having entered the service of a stage manager, becomes a great entremista, and with a bridle of selvage is taught to attack any obnoxious character. "So," says he to his companion Scipio, "as these interludes usually end in cudgellings, they used to hiss me on, and I attacked and illtreated everybody indiscriminately, thereby causing no little laughter among the illiterate, and making much money for my master."

If these customary conclusions were an integral part of these minor pieces of Cervantes, and not mere tags and gags to please the groundlings, they might account in some degree for the oblivion into which his interludes have long since fallen, an oblivion of which the cause is not easily ascertained. Even though, with Don Blas Nasarre, we regard all the dramatic works of Cervantes as parodies of the stage plays of his time, the force, felicity, and fire of these dwarf burlesques will be none the less apparent. Sancho may have been intended as a mock of squires, but he is none the less amusing. True, there will not be found in any of these entremeses that inane and exaggerated imitation of low actions and vulgar words which, as some ill-natured critics assert, is alone able to awake the interest of the vast majority of a modern audience. But, en revanche, we shall hear simple and familiar language, and taste in its purity the old and true Castilian idiom. The plots, though slight, are novel and instructive, the character is carefully distinguished, the dialogue naturally expressed. Wise saws and modern instances, witty proverbs and maxims of morality, meet the attentive eye on every page. The entremeses of Cervantes will bear examination, and not make us wonder in a second reading what we could find in them in the first to admire. Fine and white and well-coined, like the money which the long-bearded old man gave to the barber's brother, Alcouz, for his daily supply of mutton, they will not appear on after inspection as clipped-round leaves. Their subjects are light but valuable, their workmanship small but exact. They resemble those engraved gems of the once famous Pyrgoteles, of whom we now know nothing save that to him alone was accorded by Alexander the privilege of representing his august features on rings of ruby or amethyst, of sardonyx or carnelian.

JAMES MEW,

DEGENERATION.

T cannot be gainsaid that a survey of the fields of life around us impresses one with the idea that the general tendencies of living nature gravitate towards progression and improvement, and are modelled on lines which, as Von Baer long ago remarked, lead from the general or simple towards the definite special and complex. This much is admitted on all hands, and the ordinary courses of life substantiate the aphorism that progress from low grades and humble ways is the law of the organic universe that hems us in on every side, and of which, indeed, we ourselves form part. The growth of plant-life, which runs concurrently with the changing seasons of the year, impresses this fact upon us, and the history of animal development but repeats the tale. From seed to seed-leaf, from seed-leaf to stem and leaves, from simple leaves to flower, and from flower to fruit, there is exhibited a natural progress in plant existence, which testifies eloquently enough, by analogy at least, to the existence of like tendencies in all other forms of life. Similarly, in the animal host, progressive change is seen to convert that which is literally at first "without form and void " into the definite structure of the organism. A minute speck of protoplasm on the surface of the egg

-a speck that is indistinguishable, in so far as its matter is concerned, from the materies of the animalcule of the pool-is the germ of the bird of the future. Day by day the forces and powers of development weave the protoplasm into cells, and the cells into bone and muscle, sinew and nerve, heart and brain. In due season the form of the higher vertebrate is evolved, and progressive change is once more illustrated before the waiting eyes of life-science. But the full meaning of most problems which life-science presents to view is hardly gained by a merely cursory inspection of what may be called the normal side of things. The by-paths of developmentmore frequently, perhaps, than its beaten tracks-reveal guiding clues and traces of the manner in which the progress in question has come to pass. So, also, the side avenues of biology open up new phases of, it may be, the main question at issue, and may reveal, as in the present instance, an interesting reverse to the aspects we at first

deem of sole and paramount importance. For example, a casual study of the facts of animal development is well calculated to show that life is not all progress, and that it includes retrogression as well as advance. Physiological history can readily be proved to tend in many cases towards backsliding, instead of reaching forwards and upwards to higher levels. This latter tendency, beginning now to be better recognised in biology than of late years, can readily be shown to exercise no unimportant influence on the fortunes of animals and plants. In truth, life at large must now be regarded as existing between two great tendencies-the one progressive and advancing, the other retrogressive and degenerating. Such a view of matters may serve to explain many things in living histories which have hitherto been regarded as somewhat occult and difficult of solution; whilst we may likewise discover that the coexistence of progress and retrogression is a fact perfectly compatible with the lucid opinions and teachings concerning the origin of living things which we owe to the genius of Darwin and his disciples.

A fundamental axiom of modern biology declares that in the development of a living being we may discern a panoramic unfolding, more or less complete, of its descent. "Development repeats descent" is an aphorism which cultured biology has everywhere writ large over its portals. Rejecting this view of what development teaches, the phases through which animals and plants pass in the course of their progress from the germ to the adult stage present themselves to view as simply meaningless facts and useless freaks and vagaries of nature. Accepting the idea-favoured, one may add, by every circumstance of life-science- much that was before wholly inexplicable becomes plain and readily understood. And the view that a living being's development is really a quick and often abbreviated summary of its evolution and descent, both receives support from and gives countenance to the general conclusion that life's forces tend as a rule towards progress, but likewise exhibit retrogression and degeneration. If a living being is found to begin its history, as all animals and plants commence their existence, as a speck of living jelly, comparable to the animalcule of the pool, it is a fair and logical inference that the organisms in question have descended from lowly beings, whose simplicity of structure is repeated in the primitive nature of the germ. If, to quote another illustration, the placid frog of to-day, after passing through its merely protoplasmic stage, appears before us in the likeness of a gill-breathing fish (Fig. 1), the assumption is plain and warrantable that the frog race has descended from some primitive fish stock, whose likeness is reproduced with greater

or less exactness in the tadpoles of the ditches. Or if, to cite yet another example, man and his neighbour quadrupeds (Fig. 2), birds,

and reptiles, which never breathe by gills at any period of their existence, are

found in an early stage of development to possess "gill-arches" (g), such as we naturally expect to see, and such as we find in the fishes themselves, the deduction that these higher animals are descended from gillbearing or aquatic ancestors admits of no denial. On any other theory, the

existence of gill-arches in the young of an animal which never possesses gills is to be viewed as an inexplicable freak of naturea dictum which, it is needless to remark, belongs to an era one might well term prescientific, in comparison with the "sweetness

8660

A

PIG.

B

CALF. [FIG. 2.] RABBIT.

D

MAN.

and light" of these latter days. Hanging very closely on the aphorismrespecting development and its meaning,

is another bio

logical axiom,

If development teaches

well-nigh as important as the former. that life has been and still is progressive in its ways, and that the simpler stages in an animal's history represent the conditions of its earliest ancestors, it is a no less stable proposition that at all stages of their growth living beings are subject to the action of outward and inward forces. Every living organism lives under the sway and dominance of forces acting upon it from without, and which

it is enabled to modify and to utilise by its own inherent capabilities of action. It is, in fact, the old problem of the living being and its surroundings applied to the newer conceptions of life and nature which modern biology has revealed. The living thing is not a stable unit in its universe, however wide or narrow that sphere may be. On the contrary, it exists in a condition of

FIG. 3.

LINGULA.

continual war, if one may so put it, between its own innate powers of life and action, of living and being, and the physical powers and conditions outside. This much is now accepted by all scientists. Differences of opinion certainly exist as to the share which the internal constitution of the living being plays in the drama of life and progress. It seems, however, most reasonable to conclude that two parties exist to this, as to every other bargain; and regarding the animal or plant as plastic in its nature, we may assume such plasticity to be modified on the one hand by outside forces, and on the other by internal actions proper to the organism as a living thing. Examples of such tendencies of life are freely scattered everywhere in nature's domain. For instance, we know of many organisms which have continued from the remotest ages to the present time, without manifest change of form or life, and which appear before us to-day the living counterparts of their fossilised representatives of the chalk or it may be of Silurian or Cambrian times. The lampshells (Terebratula) of the chalk exist in our own seas with well-nigh inappreciable differences. The Lingula or Lingulella (Fig. 3, a), another genus of these animals, has persisted from the Cambrian age (b, c) to our own times, presenting little or no change for the attention of the geological chronicler. The curious king-crabs or Limuli (Fig. 4) of the West Indies are likewise presented to our view, with little or no variation, from very early ages of cosmical history; and of the pearly nautilus (Fig. 8)-now remaining as the only existing four-gilled and externally shelled cuttlefishthe same remark holds good. The fishes, likewise, are not

FIG. 4.

KING CRAB.