350 NO TENTATIVE EXPERIMENTS. 



the vital power inherent, so as to cause the particles to 

 assume those combinations and positions which would result 

 in the development of the structure and arrangement we 

 find in the fully-formed papilla. The disposition of the 

 several structures ultimately found must have been, as it 

 were, prepared for from the very first. The exact positions 

 in which the blood-vessel, sensitive nerve fibres, motor 

 nerve fibres, and muscles, are severally placed, are such as 

 would have been found to be most advantageous. As they 

 are actually situated, neither tissue in any way interferes 

 with the rest, and thus, it seems as if the free action of all 

 had been provided for, even before their formation was com- 

 plete. Not a fibre is out of its place. 



Whether we contemplate the structure or the action of 

 the tissues of these beautiful papillae, we shall find it difficult 

 to arrive at any other conclusion than that these minute 

 organs have been somehow specially contrived and con- 

 structed to fulfil a definite purpose, and that they were 

 designed to discharge distinct offices, and minister to the 

 advantage of the animal. Such organs would be useless 

 until their several component tissues had been fully de- 

 veloped j and it is very difficult to conceive how organs 

 composed of so many tissues, wonderfully arranged together 

 and fitted to one another, could have resulted from a 

 gradual advance from more simple organs of the same kind; 

 or have been developed in the course of ages by tentative 

 experimentation, and the destruction and exclusion of papillae 

 that were less perfect, and which rendered their owners less 

 fitted to survive in the supposed competition for existence. 



If the facts concerning the several structures and their 

 adaptation are to be accounted for by what is known con- 



