“[Why do animals] undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace... The explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.”

—  Francis Maitland Balfour

Comparative Embryology, p. 702. (1880)

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Francis Maitland Balfour1
British biologist 1851–1882

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Context: When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
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