228 EVOLUTION OF TO-DAY. 



Darwin has answered this objection in a manner 

 partially, though perhaps not wholly, satisfactory. 

 He says it is true that these organs at the beginning 

 could be of no use for the purpose to which they are 

 now applied, but it is easy to conceive that they 

 might have been used for some other purpose, and 

 thus even the rudimentary beginnings might be of use, 

 and hence selected. To use the same example, which 

 Darwin has also fully discussed, we may quite readily 

 imagine that the early whale ancestor had upon the 

 roof of its mouth a few horny protuberances, such 

 as are found in the mouth of a goose ; of no use for 

 sifting food, but aiding in the seizing and tearing of 

 food. They would be of use, and therefore preserved 

 by natural selection, and may, therefore, be sup- 

 posed to develop slowly until they became some- 

 what larger. After they became of some consider- 

 able size, they would be used both for seizing food 

 and sifting water, a condition of things found in 

 the Egyptian goose. A little further development 

 would convert them into lamella, like those of the 

 duck, and so onwards until they became large enough 

 to be used exclusively for sifting, as they are in the 

 shoveller duck. Now these lamella of the shoveller 

 duck are relatively not much shorter than the baleen 

 plates of some whales, and it is easy to see how the 

 organs, now used exclusively as sifting organs, may 

 be further developed by natural selection, until they 

 reach the size of the whalebone plates. In this way 

 we can see how even such an organ as the baleen 

 might have been developed by gradual stages, each 

 of which was of use for some purpose, though per- 



