3o8 THE HISTOKY OF CREATION. 



Finally, when comparing the embryos on Plates II. and III., 

 we must not fail to give attention again to the huTnan 

 tail (s), an organ which, in the original condition, man 

 shares with all other vertebrate animals. The discovery of 

 tailed men was long anxiously expected by many monistic 

 philosophers, in order to establish a closer relationship 

 between man and the other mammals. And in like manner 

 their dualistic opponents often maintained with pride that 

 -the complete want of a tail formed one of the most important 

 bodily distinctions between men and animals, though they 

 did not bear in mind the many tailless animals which really 

 exist. Now, man in the first months of development pos- 

 sesses a real tail as well as his nearest kindred, the tailless 

 apes (orang-outang, chimpanzee, gorilla), and vertebrate 

 animals in general. But whereas, in most of them — for 

 example, the dog {C, G^)^in the course of development it 

 always grows longer, in man (Fig. D, H) and in tailless 

 mammals, at a certain period of development, it degenerates 

 and finally completely disappears. However, even in fully 

 developed men, the remnant of the tail is seen in the three, 

 four, or five tail vertebrae (vertebrae coccygeoe) as an 

 aborted or rudimentary organ, which forms the hinder or 

 lower end of the vertebral column (p. 289). 



Most persons even now refuse to acknowledge the most 

 important deduction of the Theory of Descent, that is, the 

 palaeontological development of man from ape-like, and 

 through them from still lower, mammals, and consider such 

 a transformation of organic form as impossible. But, I 

 ask, are the phenomena of the individual development of 

 man, the fundamental features of which I have here given, 

 in any way less wonderful ? Is it not in the highest 



