HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



219 



theory of development, and reverses the order of 

 progression. 



According to that theory, it has taken untold ages 

 of evolution, advancing by gradations infinitely 

 minute, to produce at length the ideal human form ; 

 and if, after all, the organs so painfully and carefully 

 wrought are to be ycleped rudimentary, i.e. rude and 

 unwrought, the result can hardly be looked upon as 

 development. 



Mr. Darwin left us very little to be proud of, when 

 he dissected the human form, and consigned one 

 organ after another to his list of rudiments. 



The whole external shell of our ears, with the 

 various folds and prominences, he tells us is but the 

 rudiment of the convenient, though perhaps unsightly, 

 organ, that could be moved at pleasure. 



The semilunar fold of our eye is a "mere rudi- 

 ment " of the third eyelid, so well developed in birds. 

 Our sense of smell is, we are told again, " inherited 

 in an enfeebled and rudimentary condition, from some 

 early progenitor." 



But it would be wearisome to go through the entire 

 catalogue. Teeth, lungs, the very down on the skin, 

 belong to the same category. Indeed, we are strongly 

 impressed with the appalling fact that, after all, our 

 much-admired human form, with its boasted supe- 

 riority, is but a bundle of rudimentary organs that 

 have never reached perfection. 



And even if we adopt the new term proposed by 

 Mr. Ryder, is there not still a suggestion of imperfec- 

 tion in the word "vestige " ? That it is an improve- 

 ment on the term " rudiment " is evident, as at least 

 it does not reverse the order of progression, but even 

 a vestige of that which is no longer required means 

 a fault in the workmanship, which we are loath to 

 allow. I am inclined to think both terms defective, 

 the one suggesting too much, the other too little. 

 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, of which his form is the modification 

 and development ? To talk, as even Agassiz does, of 

 the os coccyx as the rudimentary tail-bone of an ape, 

 is an insult not to be tolerated by the race. 



The tail should rather be regarded as an excres- 

 cence, the ape being the rough sketch of the ideal 

 form, before the artist had pared off the superfluous 

 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, which 

 would favour the use of the term vestige as applied 

 to the latter ; 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, excres- 

 cences in one organ were bound to make up for 

 deficiencies in another. 



In man there is a harmony, to be found in no other 

 existing organism. He needs no abnormal develop- 



ment of the organs of sight or hearing, no prodigious 

 length cf arm or unsightly preponderance of jaw, 

 because the brain takes its proper share in the work 

 of self-preservation. To call any one of the organs 

 which compose this last triumph of creative power, 

 either the rudiment of what might be, or the vestige 

 of what has been, seems an insult to the dignity of 

 the creature that was made in the image of God. 



Nina F. Layard. 



NATURAL HISTORY JOTTINGS. 

 On Wasps, chiefly. 



\Co7itin itcri from p. 211.] 



FROM the observations that I have so far made on 

 these five species of wasp, it has appeared to me 

 that the Vespa sylvestris, Britannica, and rufa, are 

 early species ; that is, the consummation of the nest 

 or colony, indicated by the evolution of the large 

 perfect females or queens and the males or drones 

 (that are to secure the continuance of the species in 

 another year), is attained early in the season, much 

 earlier than is the case with the Vespa Germanica 

 and vulgaris ; in the nests of the three first mentioned 

 species, the two perfect sexes have appeared by the 

 beginning of August ; in those of the two last, not 

 before the latter half of September. Moreover, the 

 nests of the V. Germanica and vulgaris attain to 

 greater dimensions than do those of the other three 

 species, and contain more tiers or platforms of comb ; 

 the two former may each contain as many as nine 

 tiers ; whereas, in the three latter, four tiers are the 

 most that I have seen. 



Of the two small secondary nests of the Vespa rufa 

 mentioned in the first part of this paper,* built on 

 the sites of the original nests which had been 

 destroyed, one was removed out of its cavity on 

 August 27th, the first nest having been destroyed on 

 August 6th. It was only of the size of a large 

 walnut, was imperfect in the shell or case, and 

 contained one small, though regular, tier of comb- 

 consisting of seventeen cells which contained ova and 

 young larvse, all the cells being occupied. It was 

 built around, and suspended from two fine fibres of 

 some root ; and the tier of comb was suspended from 

 the top of the nest by a very long and slender pedicle, 

 the core of the pedicle, in fact, being one of the fine 

 root-fibres suspending the nest. The case or shell 

 only extended to the tier of comb. There was 

 neither queen nor drone at this miniature nest when 

 taken, and only about a dozen workers. The second 

 of these nests was taken on September 6th, its 

 predecessor having been taken on August 18th, and 

 described under that date. I had, however, first 

 observed this secondary nest on August 30th, and it 



* "SciENCE-Gossir," Jan. 18S5, p. 15. 



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