OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY 337 



individuals of some extinct high -reaching ruminant, which 

 had the longest necks, legs, etc., and could browse a 

 little above the average height, and the continued de- 

 struction of those which could not browse so high, would 

 have sufficed for the production of this remarkable quad- 

 ruped; but the prolonged use of all the parts together 

 with inheritance will have aided in an important manner 

 in their co-ordination. With the many insects which 

 imitate various objects, there is no improbability in the 

 belief that an accidental resemblance to some common 

 object was in each case the foundation for the work of 

 natural selection, since perfected through the occasional 

 preservation of slight variations which made the resem- 

 blance at all closer; and this will have been carried on 

 as long as the insect continued to vary, and as long as 

 a more and more perfect resemblance led to its escape 

 from sharp-sighted enemies. In certain species of whales 

 there is a tendency to the formation of irregular little 

 points of horn on the palate; and it seems to be quite 

 within the scope of natural selection to preserve all favor- 

 able variations, until the points were converted first into 

 lamellated knobs or teeth, like those on the beak of a 

 goose — then into short lamellae, like those of the domestic 

 ducks — and then into lamellas as perfect as those of the 

 shoveller-duck — and finally into the gigantic plates of 

 baleen, as in the mouth of the Greenland whale. In the 

 family of the ducks, the lamellae are first used as teeth, 

 then partly as teeth and partly as a sifting apparatus, 

 and at last almost exclusively for this latter purpose. 



With such structures as the above lamellae of horn or 

 whalebone, habit or use can have done little or nothing, 



as far as we can judge, toward their development. On 



—Science — 15 



