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I believe that iny own ancestor's legs and arms, in that form, 

 were of more special use to him than they are to me, but that Nature 

 has done the best she could for me with those limbs under existing 

 circumstances. 



I believe, accordingly, that the machinery of our bodies has been 

 deteriorating as to practical use ; and as to their being of special use 

 to us, they have rather retrograded as to that, so far as we are con- 

 cerned. I grant you that we are, that we must be, improved upon 

 apes, but, nevertheless, have deteriorated in our limbs from their and 

 our unknown ancestors, whose history is lost in the mists of antiquity. 

 All this rather involves a contradiction, I own, but I cannot help it. 

 I must stand by my theory. 



I believe, indeed, that on my theory this ' Great Unknown" having 

 limbs of such special use to him ought to have come off conqueror in 

 the " struggle for existence,'' but it seeems to have been all the other 

 way, and the favoured animal was " exterminated " and the inferior 

 perpetuated, so that instead of the chef dP&uvre, we have nothing but 

 bats, seals, donkeys, apes, and men ! 



I believe that the " indefinite repetition " of the same part or 

 organ is the common characteristic of all " low nr little-modified forms," 

 and therefore we may readily conclude that the unknown progenitor of 

 the vertebrata "possessed many vertebrae" It militates rather against 

 this dictum that the said ancient Incognito had limbs of more use to 

 him than are those of his descendants, the horse, seal, bat, and monkey, 

 are to them, and yet that he was a " low and little -modified form." But 

 N'importe ; if my theory cannot put up with such contradictions, what 

 is it good for? 



I believe that Nature does nothing " by leaps," and that every 

 separate part of every animal is the result of natural selection in the 

 inconceivably vast allowance of time I ask for my theory, and 

 although this also flatly contradicts my statement that the ancestor of 

 the vertebrata put in an appearance with many vertebras ready made, 

 I cannot give up the back-bone of my argument. 



I believe, I say, that the ancestor of the vertebrata had a great 

 many vertebras to begin with ; he must have been the first, and could 

 therefore have had no vertebrated animal before him ; or, in other 

 words, if you like it better, was rm//YY/, for I do hold with the 

 doctrine of spontaneous generation. You may ask me whether it may 

 not have been in like manner that the ancestor of the birds had 

 feathers, he of the fishes had scales, and so on. Yes, you may ask me 

 if you like. 



I believe that the fore and hind legs of the vertebrata and 

 articulate classes are homologous, but the middle legs of insects are 

 not so. They, therefore, have no business where they are, but are 

 mere interlopers. As such, I have nothing to do with them. 



I believe that the bear, "with his mouth open to catch flies," as 

 I have said, was the immediate ancestor of the whale. Yet the bear 

 has hind feet very useful to him, but the whale, though it has fins or 

 paddles in the place of hands, is absolutely without even the analogues 

 of the hinder limbs. How is this? you ask me. I don't know. 



I believe, of course, that the bat was not so created at first, but 

 was " worked out " of some other form in the usual way. It had at 

 first a body without wings, small or large, just as bats are now, or 

 wings without a body. I am not quite sure which. 



I believe that they were formed to live on insects, but how they 

 managed to catch them it is not for me to say. I suppose they did 

 the best they could. They only can live from foot to mouth now, 

 so that they must have been much worse off then. But by degrees their 



