EVIDENCE FROM EMBRYOLOGY 67 



cent of other animals in which the same structures 

 are useful and valuable, should be included, merely 

 to indicate ideal relationships and community of 

 plan. 



It was sought to break the force of this very serious 

 objection to the theory of special creation by saying 

 that apparently useless organs may nevertheless 

 have functions which are still unknown to us and 

 may be revealed by future discovery. In certain 

 cases, like that of the thyroid gland in the neck, this 

 contention has been justified, but there are many 

 others to which it does not apply. For example, 

 in the great and varied whale-tribe (order Cetacea) 

 which includes the right, or whalebone, whales, the 

 sperm-whales, the porpoises, dolphins, etc., the fore- 

 limbs have been converted into swimming paddles, 

 but the hind limbs appear to have vanished com- 

 pletely, leaving no externally visible trace. In- 

 ternally, however, recognizable remnants of the hind 

 limb-bones may be found in various stages of reduc- 

 tion, which differ in the different members of the 

 order. In the Greenland Right Whale the hip-bone, 

 thigh-bone and shin-bone are indicated; in the Fin- 

 whale only the hip-bones and a minute rudiment of 

 the thigh-bone are to be found; in the toothed whales 

 only an almost unrecognizable remnant of the hip- 

 bone is left and in one of the dolphins even that has 

 disappeared. Similarly, the snakes have lost their 

 limbs completely, so far as external appearance is 

 concerned, and in most members of the group no 



