This is on +quot;Sam Hinton Sings the Song of Men (All Sorts and Kinds)+quot;, Folkway Rec

This is on "Sam Hinton Sings the Song of Men (All Sorts and Kinds)",
Folkway Records, FA2400, in the "SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGISTS" section.
The liner notes read:

"For some years this was practically the theme-song of the summer
students at the Woods Hole Biological Institution in Massachusetts;
it was made up by persons unknown back in the days when _amphioxus_
(now technically known as _Branchiostoma_) was thought to resemble
the theoretical ancestor of all the vertebrate groups.  Nowadays
[he's writing in 1961], most systematic biologists agree that
amphioxus is a sideline, and that the sea-squirts and other ascidians
are more like our Great-Great-Great-to-the-Nth-power Grandparents.
It's still a good song, though, and has a sort of cheerful optimism
for the future that we need today ....  I learned it when I was a
freshman at Texas A&M College, from Dr. Sewell H. Hopkins of the
Zo Department, and I shall never forget the deep feeling and fervor
with which he used to declaim it." [diagram omitted]
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"It's a Long Way from Amphioxus"

Oh a fish-like thing appeared among the annelids one day
It hadn't any parapods nor setae to display
It hadn't any eyes or jaws or ventral nervous chord,
But it had a lot of gill slits and it had a notochord.

CHORUS:
It's a long way from amphioxus
It's a long way to us,
It's a long way from amphioxus
To the meanest human cuss.
Well, it's good-bye to fins and gill slits
And it's welcome lungs and hair,
It's a long, long way from amphioxus
But we all came from there.

It wasn't much to look at and it scarce knew how to swim,
And Nerius was very sure it hadn't come from him
The molluscs wouldn't own it and the arthropods got sore,
So the poor thing had to burrow in the sand along the shore.

(CHORUS)

He burrowed in the sand before a crab did nip his tail,
And he said, "Gill slits and myotomes are all to no avail,
I've grown some metoplural folds and sport an oral hood,
But all these fine new characters don't do me any good."

(CHORUS)

He sulked a while down in the sand without a bit of pep,
Then he stiffened up his notochord and said "I'll beat 'em yet,
Let 'em laugh and show their ignorance I don't mind their jeers,
Just wait until they see me in 100 million years!"

(CHORUS)

My notochord shall change into a chain of vertebrae,
And as fins my metoplural folds shall agitate the sea
My tiny dorsal nervous chords shall be a mighty brain,
And the vertebrae shall dominate the animal domain."

(CHORUS)

--
Pretty neat song.  Now let's hear one about the theory
of creationism ...