CLEWS IN NATURAL HISTORY. i 5 



Darwin's theory does not demand that the gorilla or any of his compeers 

 should be directly connected with man. The gorilla with his nearest 

 relation lives, so to speak, at the top of his own branch in the great 

 tree of life, while man exists at the top of another higher and entirely 

 different bough. The connection between the human and low r er types 

 is made theoretically to exist at some lower part of the stem when, from 

 a common ancestor, the human and ape types took divergent roads and 

 ways toward the ranks of nature's aristocracy. But although in some 

 cases the need for " missing links " is seen, even theoretically, to be 

 non-existent, or at least of a widely different nature from that supposed 

 by the popular mind, there are yet cases in which that need is very 

 apparent, and wherein, through the persistent tracing of the clews nature 

 has afforded, the past history of more than one race of animals and 

 plants has been made plain and apparent. Of such clews which are 

 really mere traces, and nothing more there are no better examples 

 than the curious fragments of structures found in many animals and 

 plants, and named " rudimentary organs." An animal or plant is thus 

 found to possess a mere trace of an organ or part which, so far as the 

 highest exercise of human judgment may decide, is of not the slightest 

 utility to the being. It is invariable in its presence, and as fixed in its 

 uselessness. It bears no relation to the existing life or wants of the 

 animal, but may in some cases as, for example, in a certain little rudi- 

 mentary pocket in man's digestive system, serving as an inconvenient 

 receptacle for plum-stones and like foreign bodies prove a source of 

 absolute disadvantage or even danger. On what theory can the pres- 

 ence of such organs and parts be accounted for ? is a question of ex- 

 tremely natural kind. The replies at the command of intelligent humani- 

 ty are but two. Either the animal was created with the useless append- 

 age in question a supposition which includes the idea that Nature, after 

 all, is somewhat of a bungler, and that nothing further or more com- 

 prehensible than the fiat " It is so," can be said on the subject or, 

 secondly, we may elect to explain the puzzle by the assertion that the 

 " rudimentary organ " of the existing animal represents a part once 

 fully developed in that animalVremote ancestors, but now 



Dwindled to the shortest span. 



The rudimentary organ or appendage is represented in the animal 

 of to-day as a legitimate heritage derived from its ancestor. It is, in 

 short, a family feature, to which the animal is the " rightful heir," but 

 which has fallen through the operation of natural laws and conditions 

 into disuse and desuetude, and has accordingly suffered with the career 

 of living nature " down the ringing grooves of change." Necessarily, this 

 second and rational explanation of the rudimentary appendages of ani- 

 mals and plants is founded on the supposition that nature and nature's 

 creatures are continually undergoing alterations, and that they have 

 been modified in the past, as they will be in all time to come. The ex- 



