42 



HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SIP. 



course will deny that the strict and literal sense of 

 the word " rudimentary " is "rude and unwrought" 

 or undeveloped, but it is equally certain that Darwin 

 would have been the last man in the world to tell 

 us that our organs have never reached perfection. 

 So far from leaving me " impressed with the 

 appalling fact that, after all, our much-admired 

 human form, with its boasted superiority, is but a 

 bundle of rudimentary organs, which have never 

 reached perfection," the works of Darwin teach me 

 in a most unmistakable manner that we are so 

 wonderfully made that our organs are in the highest 

 state of perfection for the existing circumstances, and 

 that we are so constructed that when the conditions 

 alter, our organs do likewise, and thus we remain 

 perfectly adapted to our surroundings, and this should 

 immeasurably increase one's awe of the Power which, 

 in the first instance, created a creature at once suited, 

 admirably suited, to the conditions by which our 

 primaeval ancestors w r ere surrounded, provided with 

 the means of bettering his condition and of raising 

 himself to a high state of civilisation, and at the 

 same time enabled to adapt his organs to this higher 

 environment. Surrounded as they were by all sorts 

 of wild animals with whom they were compelled to 

 fight for life and for food, it was essential that the 

 senses of sight, smell, and hearing, should be highly 

 developed in our ancestors ; but in this nineteenth 

 century we no longer require such keen perception in 

 these lines, and our senses are consequently modified: 

 on the other hand, the brain which in primitive man 

 was probably less complicated than nowadays, has 

 reached a much more complex stage of development 

 to suit the altered conditions, when men fight in the 

 struggle for existence with their heads instead of 

 their limbs ; and this higher state of development in 

 the brain must react on the senses in a manner 

 immensely advantageous when considered in relation 

 to the environment ; thus, though we can no longer 

 hear sounds, which were clearly audible to our 

 primitive ancestors, we are enabled to diagnose the 

 sounds we do hear, and appreciate beauties in music 

 to which the savage is still dead. Surely we owe 

 too much to the great name of Charles Darwin — to 

 the man who revolutionised modern science, and set 

 things on a firm, because true, basis, to the man who 

 devoted his whole life to the discovery of truth, in 

 the face of enormous difficulties, who would cheer- 

 fully have given up his pet theories one by one, could 

 any one have convinced him that they were false ; 

 surely, I say, we owe too much to him to accuse him 

 of offering an insult to the human race because his 

 use of the word rudimentary is not sufficiently 

 nattering to our dignity or our pride. That our 

 senses of hearing, etc., are comparatively rudimentary 

 in some ways to what they once were is to me beyond 

 doubt, nor can I doubt that it is best so, or that 

 what we lose — if it can be called a loss — in one 

 direction, we gain a hundredfold in another. But, 

 since the desire to have the word altered seems to 

 exist, and since the alternative offered— viz. vestiges 

 — does not meet with approval, may I venture to 

 suggest that the word "modified" be mentally 

 substituted when the word "rudimentary" is found 

 to be objectionable. I cannot however believe for 

 one moment that primitive man was made up of 

 "excrescences and deficiencies;" and to hint even 

 that " abnormal " development of the organs of sight 

 or anything else exists as a rule in nature is to me 

 illogical, and more insulting to the dignity of the 

 Creator than is Darwin's application of the word 

 "rudimentary" to our organs to the dignity of the 

 creature that was made in the image of God. — 

 T. Alfred Dymes. 



Rudiments and Vestiges. — A writer in your 

 last number seems to take somewhat vehement ex- 

 ception to Mr. Darwin's term of "rudimentary," as 

 applied to certain structures found in the human 

 body, and deems it a slight upon mankind to speak 

 of "vestiges." I confess I cannot see where the 

 objection lies. In speaking of structures as "rudi- 

 mentary," we use the term in comparison with 

 structures of the same kind in a higher state of 

 development. For example, the "down" covering a 

 man's body is certainly in a more rudimentary con- 

 dition as regards the hair on the lower animals, which 

 is in a more advanced stage of development. Again, 

 if we grant that man is descended from some lower 

 form, the external ear and its muscles are but 

 "vestiges" of the earlier form, which has gradually 

 atrophied and become changed, as it was no longer 

 necessary. We cannot say that they are in a higher 

 stage of development, as the highest development of 

 the sense of hearing is found in the lower animals. 

 Then why is it not right to call them "vestiges," 

 they are but the altered remains of our progenitors, 

 and are undoubtedly in a " rudimentary " condition 

 compared with the highest standard ? As for the os 

 coccyx being a rudimentary tail, I imagine that most 

 people sit down under the insult, with the greatest 

 composure, and I do not see anything more com- 

 forting to the mind, or more correct in science, in 

 calling it an " excrescence." The teeth and jaws of 

 the ape are surely superior to man in strength and 

 biting power, and these are their only use, and I can 

 see no reason why these structures in man should not 

 be considered vestiges, and to be in a rudimentary 

 condition as compared with the ape. Why should 

 these structures be called abnormal in the ape ? They 

 are perfectly natural and necessary. We might just 

 as well say that man has an abnormal amount of 

 brain, which would spoil the idea of harmony which 

 exists to perfection, in every organism ? In every 

 animal we look at, we find that all its organs are 

 beautifully adapted to perform their various functions, 

 and make up a harmonious whole. It is only the 

 natural conceit of man that causes him to consider 

 certain structures in the lower animals as unsightly. 

 He compares them with his own, but looked at with 

 regard to their anatomy, &c, they become beautiful. 

 There is nothing in anything that Mr. Darwin has 

 said, which must not strike us with increased awe 

 and admiration for the marvellous changes and 

 developments which Nature has brought about. — 

 G. D. Trevor-Roper, Surgeon, R.N. 



Fox Eggars. — I have got some fox eggars, which 

 I have had since the beginning of September. I 

 have been feeding them on bramble ; now they have 

 stopped eating it, and lie curled up in the bottom of 

 the box. Could you tell me if they are hibernating, 

 or if some disease has attacked them ? 



Nest of Australian Fly (p. 239). — From the 

 particulars given by Mr. Browne's friend, it is 

 impossible to identify this insect. I have little doubt, 

 however, that it has four wings (flies have only two), 

 and that it is one of the fossorial hymenoptera. 

 Many of the English species, especially those of the 

 genera Fompilus and Crabro, provision their cells 

 with spiders. Some store up for their young other 

 insects, such as flies, aphides, beetles, and lepidop- 

 terous larvre. Towards the end of July last, I came 

 across a large colony of Ccrceris arenaria, near 

 Weybridge, and it was interesting to watch the 

 females arriving on the wing at, and entering their 

 burrows on the upright face of a sandbank, each 

 carrying between her legs a beetle, always the same 



