60 THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE. 



welded together into a single piece. They 

 must once upon a time have been real dis- 

 connected jointed vertebrae, like those of the 

 dog's or lizard's tail ; and the way in which 

 they have become fixed fast into a solid 

 mass sheds a world of light upon the true 

 nature and origin of birds, as well as upon 

 many analogous cases elsewhere. 



When I say that these bones were once 

 separate, I am indulging in no mere hypothe- 

 tical Darwinian speculation. I refer, not to 

 the race, but to the particular crow in person. 

 These very pieces themselves, in their em- 

 bryonic condition, were as distinct as the indi- 

 vidual bones of the bird's neck or of our own 

 spines. If you were to examine the chick 

 in the egg you would find them quite di- 

 vided. But as the young crow grows more 

 and more into the typical bird-pattern, this 

 lizard-like peculiarity fades away, and the 

 separate pieces unite by ' anastomosis ' into 

 a single ' coccygean bone,' as the osteologists 

 call it. In all our modern birds, as in this 



