178 LESSONS FEOM NATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



mere snare laid to entrap our judgment&quot; (vol. i. p. 32). 

 Mr. Darwin is, I am quite sure, far enough from pretend 

 ing that he has exhausted the possibilities of the case; and 

 yet could anything but a conviction that the whole field had 

 been explored exhaustively, justify such an assertion? If, 

 without such a conviction, it was permissible so to dogma 

 tise, every theoriser who had attained to a plausible expla 

 nation of a set of phenomena might equally make use of 

 the assertion, and say, until a better explanation was found, 

 that to doubt him would be to attribute duplicity to the 



Almighty. 



Some of the instances that Mr. Darwin gives of reversion 

 Mistakes to Brutal ancestry are quite gratuitous. Of the 

 to reversion. occas i nal double uterus of the human female he 

 says : 



&quot; In other and rarer cases, two distinct uterine cavities are formed, 

 each having its proper orifice and passage. No such stage is passed 

 through during the ordinary development of the embryo, and it is 

 difficult to believe, though perhaps not impossible, that the two simple, 

 minute, primitive tubes could know how (if such an expression may be 

 used) to grow into two distinct uteri, each with a well-constructed 

 orifice and passage, and each furnished with numerous muscles, 

 nerves, glands and vessels, if they had not formerly passed through a 

 similar course of development, as in the case of existing marsupials. 

 No one will pretend that so perfect a structure as the abnormal double 

 uterus in woman could be the result of mere chance. But the principle 

 of reversion, by which long -lost dormant structures are called back 

 into existence, might serve as the guide for the full development of the 

 organ, even after the lapse of an enormous interval of time.&quot; Vol. i. 

 page 123. 



But if this were really a reversion to marsupial structure, 

 we ought surely more often to meet with reversion to the 

 characters of animals much less removed in time (on Mr. 

 Darwin s theory) than are the Marsupialia. We ought, that 

 is to meet with, for example, a long tail, or a prehensile 

 hallux or tusk-like canine teeth, or a completely hairy back, 

 far more often than we do a completely double uterus. Yet 

 such is by no means the case. As to the fancy concerning 

 the inability of an organ to form itself de novo, Mr. Darwin 



