HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



223 



I was glad to read in a recent number of "The 

 Asclepiad," an article by Dr. B. W. Richardson, on 

 "Alcohol at the Bedside," and to find there from 

 the pen of one of the most staunch and determined 

 of abstainers a decided recognition of the great 

 medicinal value of alcohol, which some fanatical 

 teetotalers have lately denied, who would prohibit its 

 use in hospitals, and banish it from the pharmacopoeia. 

 But Dr. Richardson protests against prescribing it in 

 the form of wine or other commercial beverage. He 

 insists upon the use of pure ethylic alcohol, dispensed 

 like other drugs, and mixed by the dispenser only 

 with the other items of the prescription. The 

 modern manufacture of choice wines renders it 

 absolutely impossible for the physician to know what 

 he is prescribing when he recommends the use of 

 any of them. His grandfather may. possibly have 

 formed some idea of the composition of the wine of 

 his period. 



RUDIMENTS AND VESTIGES. 



IN the controversy on this subject in the pages of 

 Science-Gossip during the last year, there 

 have been, besides various side issues, two distinct 

 questions under discussion, both of which Miss 

 Layard started in her original article in Science- 

 Gossip for October, 1887, and which, it seems to 

 me, should be studiously kept separate. 



The first of these is, whether Mr. Darwin's use of 

 the word rudimentary in the "Descent of Man," 

 etc., is in accordance with its etymological and 

 generally accepted sense. 



I think that, as Miss Layard says in her last 

 contribution to the discussion, there has been a 

 general consensus of opinion "that a better word 

 might be substituted ; " but, at the same time, as 

 she rather implies by using the words "reluctant 

 recognition," there has been a general feeling that 

 the matter was not of the first importance when 

 compared with Miss Layard's other contention. 



For although Miss Layard is absolutely right in 

 saying that "if Mr. Darwin, by his persistent 

 accuracy, has taught his readers to submit terms as 

 well as facts to a strict investigation, he would have 

 been the last to' complain of the jealous regard 

 for truth which cannot sanction the misuse of a 

 single word ; " still this possible misuse sinks into 

 absolute insignificance beside the other question 

 which Miss Layard has raised. As a matter of fact, 

 not only by Darwin, but by many others among the 

 first authorities, is the word used in this sense, as a 

 consultation of the pages of " Nature " will show at 

 once. Still it is an undoubted fact, that this use is 

 not in accordance with the derivation of the word, 

 nor its general use. 



Miss Layard has, however, from the first, associated 

 with this a question of vastly more importance than 



the possible misuse of a word could be, inasmuch as 

 it affects the whole conception of organic evolution. 

 This is whether. one or more of man's organs may or 

 may not be said to be in a lower state of develop- 

 ment than any corresponding ones throughout or- 

 ganic nature. At the base of Miss Layard's argument 

 on this subject, there appears to me to lie a 

 fundamental misconception of the nature of organic 

 evolution, and it is connected with the use of such 

 words as "typical standard," "progression," "re- 

 trogression," etc. For while Miss Layard says in 

 her last notes on the subject that "it does not 

 necessarily follow " from " the unmistakable family 

 likeness running throughout creation " " that we are 

 justified in making invidious comparisons between 

 organs specially adapted to differing purposes," she 

 herself makes these "individious comparisons" in 

 her first article by saying : " Allowing, as we must, 

 man's to be the ideal form, might it not be more 

 correct to speak of the lower forms which preceded it 

 as made up of excrescences and deficiencies ? " And 

 again : ' ' The tail should ... be regarded as an 

 excrescence, the ape being the rough sketch of the 

 ideal form, before the artist had pared off the super- 

 fluous clay. To a casual observer, the huge shoulder 

 bones, and the formidable jaw and teeth of the ape, 

 might argue a superiority over the same organs in 

 man. . . . but when we consider the deficient brain 

 of the anthropoid ape, and his small skull, we see at 

 once that to keep the balance true, excrescences in 

 one organ were bound to make up for deficiencies in 

 another." 



It is precisely this arbitrary setting up of a 

 "typical standard," or an "ideal form," for the 

 whole organism, rather than judging organisms by 

 their relation to environment, which Mr. Fenn 

 wrote to combat in the November Science-Gossip, 

 and which Miss Layard herself now deprecates. 

 The only justifiable use of such a phrase is when it is 

 applied to the most highly-developed known form of 

 an organ or set of organs. Thus Sachs, in his 

 " Physiology of Plants " (p. 6), says : " I name 

 organic forms which present the essential peculiarities 

 in great perfection, and from which, therefore, a 

 clear scientific consideration best proceeds, typical 

 forms.'''' In this sense the tail of the lower animals 

 must be regarded as the typical form, not as an "ex- 

 crescence," while our os coccyx is, on the other hand, 

 not a "more perfect shortened formation," but in a 

 lower state of development and therefore " rudimen- 

 tary," or, if Miss Layard will, " reduced." This then 

 is the only sense in which I used the word, and it is 

 difficult to see in what other sense it could be used 

 by any one accepting the theory of organic evolution 

 as generally understood. For the setting up of an 

 arbitrary standard of perfection; would imply the 

 operation of an intelligent agency, and would be 

 entirely inconsistent with the operation of a 

 factor like natural selection, or the inheritance of 



