370 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[June 22, 1883. 



oip To say that special creative acts might well have 

 fdshionccl all animals on one general plan, if that plan 

 were the hest, is reasonable enough ; but it seems alto- 

 gether unreasonable to say that there would probably, or 

 even that there might possibly, have been such a rigid 

 adherence to one plan that those animals which had no 

 use or occasion for certain organs, would yet be provided 

 with the rudiments of them, and in the beginning of 

 their existence would have them in relatively full de- 

 velopment. 



The study of such an animal as the whale illustrates 

 this line of argument with singular force. For scarcely 

 any animal possesses so many rudimentary organs as the 

 whale. Thus the whale wants no teeth, yet in the begin 

 ning of its existence it has teeth. It has no use for separate 

 fingers, or, therefore, for the muscles which move the 

 fingers ; yet it has fingers, immovable — because enclosed in 

 an unyielding integument — j'et provided with muscles. It 

 wants no hind limbs (at any rate, it gets along very wfll 

 without any) ; jet not only has it rudimentary hind limbs, 

 deep buried in its body, but in these can bo traced many 

 details of structure such as are found in quadrupeds, 

 (zoologists, by the way, nearly always speak of the whale 

 as a quadruped). Regarding the structure of each animal 

 as a matter arranged originally by special creative acts, such 

 characteristics as these are more than perplexing : they 

 are clearly suggestive of imperfection of plan and varia- 

 bility of purpose. But regarded as the evolutionist 

 regards them, they indicate the perfection and widely- 

 ranging character of the law by which, as surroundings 

 change, animals change in character along with them. Al- 

 though the idea of Deity must ever transcend (and trans- 

 scend infinitely) the thoughts of man, there seems some- 

 thing infinitely nobler in the conception of a la\\giver 

 whose laws take into account the occasion for change 

 and provide for them, than in that of a workman re- 

 stricted to a particular plan, and rather fashioning useless 

 mechanism on that plan than departing from it as occasion 

 arose. To use an illustration drawn from manufacture, 

 we recngnise wisdom in the gradual progression from the 

 heavier vehicles of former days, when roads were bad, to 

 the lighter carriages of our own time ; whereas, when we 

 note that the peculiarities of the old stage-coach were 

 repeated — quite uselessly — in the first forms of railway 

 carriages, even to the reproduction of features having no 

 meaning in railway travelling, we recognise simply the 

 absence of inventive facult)'. Yet there are those who are 

 absolutely offended with science for showing that through- 

 out nature there is evidence of wisdom of the former type, 

 though infinitely wider in scope, and no evidence of that 

 want of inventive faculty whicli would have been suggested 

 by the uniform application of one and the same plan 

 under varying conditions. 



Apart from such considerations as these, the theory of 

 biological evolution applied to different classes of animals 

 affords evidence such as we can obtain in no other way 

 respecting their past history. Thus, while paheontology 

 affords very little information respecting the past history 

 of the cetaceans, the rudimentary organs throw some light 

 on the question. It ajipears, says Professor Flowers, "that 

 originally whale.s were land mammals of fairly high or- 

 ganisation, with a hairy covering, and complete olfactory 

 apparatus for smelling in air, teeth of several kinds, and 

 distinct fore and hind limbs." " Whales," he adds, " are 

 not related to animals like seals, as if the hind limbs had 

 been developed into very efficient aquatic organs. It is 

 not easy to imagine how thest' limbs could have become 

 completely atrophied, and their function transferred to 

 the taH. IMore probably whales were derived from 



animals with tails which were"u.sed in swimming, like 

 those of the beaver, and eventually with such effect that 

 the hind limbs became no longer necessary." The whale, 

 judged by its anatomical structure, seems more closely 

 related to pig-like animals than to any of the camivora. 

 The absence of any traces of cetaceans in the creta- 

 ceous strata has long lieen noticed as a remarkable cir- 

 cumstance. Professor Flowers finds a probaVjle explana- 

 tion in the fact that many existing species belong 

 exclusively to rivers, whence we may perhaps infer that 

 the whole group had a fiuviatile origin. It would be in- 

 teresting to in(iuire what was the probable origin of the 

 plesiosaurus, ichthyosaurus, and other such sea saurians, 

 whose place the cetaceans are supposed by some palajonto- 

 logists to have taken. It has long been commonly assumed 

 that the former have necessarily disappeared, but if we 

 consider the circumstances under which the cetaceans pro- 

 bably took their present position, it does not seem easy to 

 recognise any reason for supposing that the saurians would 

 have been dispossessed by the cetaceans. It seems exceed- 

 ingly probable that if they still exist they might yet 

 scarcely ever be seen. Some accounts of what has been 

 called the sea serpent agree well, as Gosse and other natu- 

 ralists have shown, with the theory that sea saurians still 

 exist. 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 



XII. 



By W. Mattieu Williams. 



RETURNING to the question suggested by my last 

 paper. Why has Rumford's roaster fallen into disuse, 

 notwithstanding the fact, mentioned in his essay, that 

 Mr. Hopkins, of Greek-street, Soho, had sold above 200, 

 and others were making them 1 



Those of my readers who have had practical experience 

 in using hot air or in superheating steam, will doubtless 

 have already detected a weak point in the " blowpipes." 

 When iron pipes are heated to redness, or thereabouts, and 

 a blast of air or steam passes through them, they work 

 admirably for awhile, but presently the pipe gives way, for 

 iron is a combustible substance, and burns slowly when 

 heated and supplied with abundant oxygen, either by 

 means of air or water, the latter being decomposed, its 

 hydrogen set free, while its oxygen combines with the 

 iron and reduces it to friable oxide. Rumford does not 

 appear to have understood this, or he would have made his 

 blowpipes of fire-clay or other refractory non-oxydizable 

 material. 



The records of the Great Seal Office contain specifica- 

 tions of hundreds of ingenious inventions that have failed 

 most vexatiously from this defect ; and I could tell of joint- 

 stock companies that have been " floated " to carry out in- 

 ventions involving the use of heated air or superheated steam 

 that have worked beautifully and with apparent economy 

 while the shares were in the market, and then collapsed 

 just when the calls were paid up, the cost of renewal of super- 

 heaters and hot-air chambers having worse than annulled 

 the economy of working fuel described in the prospectus. 

 Thus a vessel driven l)y heated air, as a substitute for 

 steam, was fitted up with its caloric engine, and crossed the 

 Atlantic with passengers on board. The voyage practically 

 demonstrated a great saving of coal ; patent rights were 

 purchased accordingly for a very large amount, and shares 

 went up buoyantly until the oxidation of the great air 

 chamlier proved that the engine burned iron as well as coal 

 at a ruinous cost. 



