II.] INCIPIENT STRUCTUliES. 53 



It may be objected, perhaps, that these difficulties are 

 difficulties of ignorance — that we cannot explain them 

 because we do not know enough of the animals. But it 

 is here contended that this is not the case ; it is not that 

 we merely fail to see how Natural Selection acted, but 

 that there is a positive incompatibility between the cause 

 assigned and the results. It will be stated shortly, in illus- 

 tration of this incompatibility, what wonderful instances 

 of co-ordination and of unexpected utility Mr. .Darwin has 

 discovered in orchids. The discoveries are not disputed 

 or undervalued, but the explanation of their origin is 

 deemed thoroughly unsatisfactory — utterly insufficient to 

 explain the incipient minute beginnings of structures whicli 

 are of utility only when they are considerably developed. 

 Let us consider the mammary gland, or breast. Is it 

 conceivable that the young of any animal was ever 

 saved from destruction by accidentally sucking a drop of 

 scarcely nutritious fluid from an accidentally hypertro- 

 phied cutaneous gland of its mother ? And even if 

 one was so, what chance was there of the perpetuation 

 of such a variation ? On the hypothesis of Natural Se- 

 lection itself, we must assume that up to that time the 

 race had been well adapted to the surrounding conditions ; 

 the temporary and accidental trial and change of con- 

 ditions which caused the so-sucking young one to be 

 the " fittest to survive " under the supposed circumstances, 

 would soon cease to act, and then the progeny of the 

 mother with the accidentally hypertrophied sebaceous 

 glands, would have no tendency to survive the far out- 

 numbering descendants of the normal ancestral form. If, 

 on the other hand, we assume the change of conditions 

 not to have been temporary but permanent, and also 



