Connecting Links. 191 



These changes were produced only after successive 

 ages representing vast eras of time. 



From this brief review it will be seen that Darwin- 

 ism assumes that the side splints so familiar in the 

 horse of to-day indicate an ancestry in which the 

 splints were more fully developed. In other words, 

 the splints are the remains of organs which in the 

 course of the development of the animal have dis- 

 appeared. 



Adopting this line of argument Darwin would 

 /point to the teeth in the embryo of the whalebone 

 [whale, which do not appear as the animal grows, as 

 evidence that the giant animal in the remote past 

 possessed teeth, so the rudimentary pelvis, nip-bone, 

 thigh, and leg bones suggest that at one time this 

 huge creature possessed hind legs. In the Greenland 

 whale especially, the hip- and knee-joint, with some 

 of their muscles, are well defined beneath the skin, 

 so that we can imagine that at one time in the 

 remote past the whale was a shore-loving creature, 

 which finally became more aquatic in its habits, and 

 the hind legs, like the many toes of the horse, disap- 

 peared. 



Among the early birds of this country the wonder- 

 ful Odontornithes, or birds with teeth, discovered by 

 Professor Marsh, we have examples of connecting 

 links striking in the extreme, and pointing to an 

 ancestry so remote that the imagination almost fails 

 to grasp the reality, and the mind is bewildered by 

 the testimony that shows conclusively that by fol- 

 lowing back the history of our feathered friends we 

 should be led imperceptibly but surely into the 

 domain of the reptiles. 



