142 The Story of the Bacteria 



and all the things they do, the marks of 

 earlier stages of development. 



The uncouth ancestral being, which by and 

 by was to be moulded into man, once had 

 need of more bowel space than he now re- 

 quires. But when this became unnecessary 

 a segment of it wasted away, leaving a weazen 

 remnant which we call the appendix, and 

 which gives some folks a good deal of bother 

 now and then. There was a weak spot in the 

 lower abdomen once when man's progenitor 

 went on all fours. This interested him not at 

 all then. But when his descendant got along 

 in his development so as to stand up on his 

 hind legs, the pressure of the bowels on this 

 weak spot was much increased, and so some 

 people find a knuckle of intestine pressing 

 out in what we call a rupture or hernia. Thus 

 we might go on a good while with these marks 

 of forgotten histories cropping out occasion- 

 ally in the last of the long ancestral line. 



But what especially concerns us now, is 

 the more subtle marks of evolution in the 

 intimate performances of the body cells. 

 Whatever capacities they now possess and 



