Animal Causes. 215 



of every animal is the stomach or central battery. 

 This is the first definite organ, and all the others 

 follow in most haphazard fashion. What all animal 

 mechanisms are and how they have been evolved is 

 no part of our business. This may be obtained in 

 any encyclopaedia. It is only necessary for us to say 

 that from evidence no mechanism from the highest 

 to the lowest is beyond the power or reach of the 

 primary laws working automatically and harmoni- 

 ously, for many animals are faulty in the extreme ; 

 even cripples among men are not infrequent. In fact, 

 summarising the whole field of animal mechanism, 

 there is among the lower animals especially a crudity, 

 clumsiness, and eccentricity which can only be attri- 

 buted to accident. No omnipotent and intelligent 

 Creator could father them and claim any credit for 

 their construction. Witness the oddity of producing 

 a prehensile organ out of the nose of an elephant and 

 the tail of a monkey ; the absurdity of furnishing 

 beetles with wings in soldered-up cases ; the farce of 

 providing a bee with a sting used only to compass its 

 own death ; the murderous instincts of the queen bee 

 towards her daughters ; the untoward fate of a bee 

 prince consort ; the risk man runs of choking at every 

 meal ; and the whole business of external metamor- 

 phosis generally, with the danger attendant to moult 

 in birds, crustaceans, and snakes. 



Further, tracing up the development of a single 

 organ or limb from the lowest animal to the highest, 

 we obtain overwhelming evidence that Nature at her 



