MONSTROSITIES 279 



When one reads Professor Flower's book on The Horse, one feels 

 a sort of conviction that the method of creation has been modifica- 

 tion by very slow steps, now increasing the number and size of parts, 

 then diminishing them, and even suppressing them entirely, accord- 

 ing to the dictates of surroundings and the struggle for life and love. 



When, however, one looks into Stebbing's book on the Crustacea, 

 and turns up Dorippe Dorsipes, and others with two pairs of legs 

 on their backs, one becomes staggered, and the former ' slow-step ' 

 faith becomes much shaken. One then begins to think that the 

 method of creation may not always have been by slow steps, and 

 that sometimes a monstrous form turned up, which, if it could live 

 and struggle, and become adapted to surroundings, might become 

 the foundation of a race on what we would call ' monstrous ' lines. 



Then at p. 40 Mr. Stebbing says : ' The theory that all append- 

 ages of a crustacean are either legs or modified legs will strike a casual 

 observer as rather strained in its application to the mandibles. 

 That a Crab should adapt the basal joints of a pair of limbs 

 for masticating its food may seem as unlikely and absurd as that 

 a man should have teeth on his elbows and should draw them up 

 in front of his lips for the purpose of biting and chewing whatever 

 he wished to put into his mouth. To prevent all cavilling, however, 

 on this point of the theory, the King Crab, Limulus, is so obliging 

 as to ignore the ordinary mouth organs, and to use the bases of its 

 actual walking legs as mandibles.' 



It is no wonder that anomalous legs should occur at the depths 

 of 3050 and 2375 fathoms (p. 19). It would be a wonder if anom- 

 alies did not occur at that depth. It is a marvel that the molecules 

 of the ova can arrange themselves at all under that pressure. 



Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace says : * * Herbert Spencer tacitly 



1 Are individual acquired characters inherited?' Fortnightly Review, May 1893, 

 p. 657. 



