1 6 THE HISTOEY OF CREATION. 



performing any service — adapted for a purpose, but without 

 in reality fulfilling that purpose. When we consider the 

 attempts which the earlier naturalists have made in order 

 to explain this mystery, we can scarcely help smiling at the 

 strange ideas to which they were led. Being unable to find 

 a true explanation, they came, for example, to the conclu- 

 sion that the Creator had placed these organs there "for the 

 sake of symmetry," or they believed that it had appeared 

 unwise and unsuitable to the Creator (seeing that their 

 nearest kin did possess such organs) that these organs 

 should be completely wanting in creatures, where they 

 are incapable of performing a function, and where it 

 cannot be otherwise from the special mode of life. In 

 compensation for the non-existing function, he had at least 

 furnished them with the outward but empty form ; nearly 

 in the same manner as civil ofiicers, in uniform, are furnished 

 with an innocent sword, which is never dra^yn from the 

 scabbard. I scarcely believe, however, that any of my 

 readers will be content with such an explanation. 



Now, it is precisely this widely spread and mysterious 

 phenomenon of rudimentary organs, in regard to which all 

 other attempts at explanation fail, which is perfectly ex- 

 plained, and indeed in the simplest and clearest way, by 

 Darwin's Theory of Inheritance and Adaptation. We can 

 trace the important laws of inheritance and adaptation in 

 the domestic animals which we breed, and the plants which 

 we cultivate ; and a series of such laws of inheritance have 

 already been established. Without going further into this 

 at present, I will only remark that some of them perfectly 

 explain, in a mechanical way, the coming into existence of 

 rudimentary organs, so that we must look u})on the appear- 



