Chap. XIV.] AND ABORTED ORGANS. 263 



dependently of the effects of disuse, rudimentary and 

 would at last be wholly suppressed ; for the variations 

 towards diminished size would no longer be checked by 

 natural selection. The principle of the economy of 

 growth, explained in a former chapter, by which the 

 materials forming any part, if not useful to the pos- 

 sessor, are saved as far as is possible, will perhaps come 

 into play in rendering a useless part rudimentary. But 

 tliis principle will almost necessarily be confined to the 

 earlier stages of the process of reduction ; for we cannot 

 suppose that a minute papilla, for instance, representing 

 in a male flower the pistil of the female flower, and 

 formed merely of cellular tissue, could be further reduced 

 or absorbed for the sake of economising nutriment. 



Finally, as rudimentary organs, by whatever steps 

 they may have been degraded into their present useless 

 condition, are the record of a former state of things, and 

 have been retained solely through the power of inherit- 

 ance, — we can understand, on the genealogical view of 

 classification, how it is that systematists, in placing 

 organisms in their proper places in the natural system, 

 have often found rudimentary parts as useful as, or even 

 sometimes more useful than, parts of high physiological 

 importance. Eudimentary organs may be compared 

 with the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, 

 but become useless in the pronunciation, but which serve 

 as a clue for its derivation. On the view of descent 

 with modification, we may conclude that the existence 

 of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless con- 

 dition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange 

 difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of 

 creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance 

 with the views here explained. 



