No. 7.] ROBIN'S — NATURAL SELECTIO.^. 410 



ence, and the survival of the fittest, is not only not known as a 

 matter of history, it is inconceivable as a matter of hypothesis. 



There is one way yet remaining in which, consistently with 

 evolution, it is possible to account for an organ that could not 

 have been evolved from a primitive organ of similar function 

 but of less efficiency. It is by that which has been tacitly as- 

 sumed but not explicitly named in the speculations of evolution 

 — the transmutation of function. What in amphipods are loco- 

 motive organs become in lobsters the so-called foot-jaws. In 

 like manner it has been assumed that fins for swimming have 

 been transmuted gradually into legs for walking, into wiogs for 

 flying, into hands for grasping. 



Not to speak of the fact that all such phiusibly a«-orted trans- 

 mutations are not from one function to another of (lifi"erent order 

 but from one modification of a function to another modification 

 of the same function, it is sufficient to the present purpose to 

 point out that in all such cases the transmuted organs are homol- 

 ogous, and necessarily homologous ; morphologically they are 

 alike, though functionally they difi^er. Now so long as it was 

 supposed, as by the earlier anatomists, that the ink bag was a 

 peculiar sort of gall-bladder, it was possible to suppose that by 

 transmutation of function what in other molluscs was an organ 

 of digestion in the naked cephalopods had been transmuted into 

 an organ of defence. But it is now well known that the ink bag 

 is a special organ, homologous to none other among molluscs. 

 It cannot then be accounted for by transmutation of function. 



It is worthy of remark that this organ is always found in 

 those cephalopods which have no external shell. It is never 

 found in those which have such a covering except in the case of 

 the paper nautilus, whose fragile shell, belonging only to the 

 female, serves not as a defence to the occupant but merely as a 

 place for the deposition and incubation of its eggs. 



Many — not all — evolutionists roundly declare that there is no 

 proof of design in the universe. Many theologians, stunned by 

 the constant and noisy iteration, are almost ready to abandon 

 Paley's grand argument, as though somehow it had grown ob- 

 solete. Let them take into consideration the ink-bag of the 

 cuttle fish. Here is one organ that cannot have been produced 

 by natural selection, nor can it have resulted from transmutation 

 of function. It appears early in mesozoic time fully developed 

 in the first of the naked cephalopods. Its sole use is the defence 



