Note 179 — Chapter V

Poor Sir Thomas thought that he was going back to the beginning when he traced his descent up to Adam, or, to be more exact, to the red earth of which the "protoplast" was made. The late Charles Darwin carried back the pedigree of man a prodigious length, though he lowered its quality. There can be little doubt that our author would have disdained to accept what used to be called "the lower animals" as, in any sense, ancestors of mankind, or, at any rate, of the dignified family of Urquhart.