266 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



creased in size; and this clearly shows that the rudimen- 

 tary and perfect pistils are essentially alike in nature. An 

 animal may possess various parts in a perfect state, and 

 yet they may in one sense be rudimentary, for they are 

 useless: thus the tadpole of the common Salamander or 

 AVater-newt, as Mr. G, H. Lewes remarks, "has gills, 

 and passes its existence in the water; but the Salamandra 

 utra, which lives high up among the mountains, brings 

 forth its young full-formed. This animal never lives in 

 the water. Yet if we open a gravid female, we find 

 tadpoles inside her with exquisitely feathered gills; and 

 when placed in water they swim about like the tadpoles 

 of the water-newt. Obviously this aquatic organization 

 has no reference to the future life of the animal, nor 

 has it any adaptation to its embryonic condition; it 

 has solely reference to ancestral adaptations, it repeats 

 a phase in the development of its progenitors." 



An organ, serving for two purposes, may become 

 rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more 

 important purpose, and remain perfectly efficient for the 

 other. Thus in plants, the office of the pistil is to allow 

 the pollen-tubes to reach the ovules within the ovarium. 

 The pistil consists of a stigma supported on a style; but 

 in some Compositae, the male florets, which of course 

 cannot be fecundated, have a rudimentary pistil, for it 

 is not crowned with a stigma; but the style remains well 

 developed and is clothed in the usual manner with hairs, 

 which serve to brush the pollen out of the surrounding 

 and conjoined anthers. Again, an organ may become 

 rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a 

 distinct one: in certain fishes the swimbladder seems to 

 be rudimentary for its proper function of giving buoy- 



