Abstract
DURING the past fifty years one of the chief tasks to which zoologists have applied themselves has been the reconstruction of the phylogeny of the animal kingdom in accordance with the principles of evolution laid down by Charles Darwin. This task is still far from being completed, although no one can doubt that very substantial progress has been made. The evidence is still very imperfect, and every increase of knowledge makes more clear the need for extreme caution in drawing conclusions. When we think of the familiar comparison of the animal kingdom to a luxuriantly branching tree of which only a few of the topmost twigs are known to us in the living condition, while at the same time we are only able to recover from the past the most fragmentary records of the millions of extinct forms, we are able to realise why it is that most zoologists at present refuse to commit themselves to any particular theory of the origin of vertebrates. Of course, numerous theories have been put for ward from time to time, but none has met with anything like general acceptance, and there appears to be a widespread feeling that in the present state of our knowledge any such theory is somewhat premature. The discussion of the subject, however, cannot fail to be of use in stimulating thought, and the debate which has occupied the last two meetings of the Linnean Society has naturally aroused considerable interest.
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DENDY, A. The Linnean Society's Discussion on the Origin of Vertebrates . Nature 82, 445–446 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/082445a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082445a0