34 BOMBAY DUCKS 



pared with man. This they indeed are, but not so 

 helpless as might at first be supposed, because they 

 have other compensating organs. 



The elephant possesses a trunk which is nearly as 

 useful as an arm. The sensitive upper lip of the horse, 

 the tapir, and other creatures, is a rudimentary prehen- 

 sile organ — an attempt at a hand. The beak of the 

 parrot, the crow, and the woodpecker, and the claws of 

 most birds perform many of the functions of the human 

 hand. The fore-limbs of some mammals, as, for in- 

 stance, the bear and the squirrel, are utilized in a similar 

 way. 



In addition to these auxiliaries nearly every verte- 

 brate animal boasts a tail. To the naturalist this is 

 perhaps the most interesting of all organs. It is one of 

 the few luxuries which parsimonious Dame Nature 

 allows her children. Always a useful organ, the tail is 

 in hardly a single instance absolutely essential to the 

 existence of its possessor. I doubt if any animal exists 

 that could not manage to jog along through life without 

 its caudal appendage. 



The organ seems, so to speak, to have arisen by 

 accident. Without desiring to dogmatise, I think it 

 may be laid down that the early ancestors of the vast 

 majority of existing back-boned animals were am- 

 phioxus-like creatures devoid of limbs. When these 

 appendages first budded forth it chanced that the hind 

 pair did not arise at the extreme end of the animal ; 

 they took origin some little way forward. And, as the 

 vital organs did not extend to the whole length of the 

 body, there remained a posterior portion of comparative 



