DESCENT OF MAN FROM SOME LOWER FORM. 141 



parts and organs in the different species of the class are 

 homologous. The whole subject is included under the 

 general term of Morphology. This is one of the most in- 

 teresting departments of natural history, and may almost 

 be said to be its very soul. What can be more curious 

 than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that 

 of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of 

 the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be con- 

 structed on the same pattern, and should include similar 

 bones, in the same relative positions ? How curious it is, 

 to give a subordinate though striking instance, that the 

 hind-feet of the kangaroo, which are so well fitted for 

 bounding over the open plains, those of the climbing, 

 leaf-eating koala, equally well fitted for grasping the 

 branches of trees, those of the ground-dwelling, insect or 

 root eating, bandicoots, and those of some other Austra- 

 lian marsupials, should all be constructed on the same ex- 

 traordinary type, namely, with the bones of the second 

 and third digits extremely slender and enveloped within 

 the same skin, so that they appear like a single toe fur- 

 nished with two claws ! Notwithstanding this similarity 

 of pattern, it is obvious that the hind-feet of these several 

 animals are used for as widely different purposes as it is 

 possible to conceive. The case is rendered all the more 

 striking by the American opossums, which follow nearly 

 the same habits of life as some of their Australian rela- 

 tives, having feet constructed on the ordinary plan. Pro- 

 fessor Flower, from whom these statements are taken, 

 remarks in conclusion, " "We may call this conformity to 

 type, without getting much nearer to an explanation of 

 the phenomenon " ; and he then adds, " but is it not 

 powerfully suggestive of true relationship, of inheritance 

 from a common ancestor ? " 



