THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 71 



Lord C. True science, certainly, cannot be built upon 

 suppositions. 



Homo. Moreover, my Lord, he is accusing the god he 

 believes to have built up the world around us I mean 

 Natural Selection of the folly either of having given a tail 

 where it was unnecessary, or of having withheld it where it 

 should have been present. In short, he finds that Natural 

 Selection, in giving a tail to one species of monkey, and 

 withholding it from another similar species, has not acted 

 consistently, nor in a way that suits his argument. I think 

 I could suggest to Mr. Darwin a way in which he might 

 account, consistently with his own principles, for the loss of 

 the tail by man. He must surely, when writing on this 

 point, have forgotten a fact regarding the larvas of Ascidians 

 those representatives of our " most ancient progenitors." 

 He knows very well that these larvas cast off their tails 

 when they become sessile. Why may not man have done 

 the same when he emerged into humanity from the last of 

 his ape-like progenitors, and thus became, if not so sessile 

 as the Ascidian, at least more so than the ape ? The loss 

 of the tail by man might thus be attributed to "reversion 

 to a former and ancient type of structure." 



Lord C. That would be an approach to Lord Monboddo's 

 idea, namely, " that man rubbed off his tail by sitting 

 on it." 



Darwin. My Lord, " the occurrence of such rudiments " 

 in man, " is difficult to explain on the belief of the separate 

 creation of each species." (Vol. i. p. 30.) 



Homo. I beg to say, my Lord, that those points of 

 similarity in bodily structure between man and the lower 

 animals, which Mr. Darwin calls "rudiments," are suffi- 

 ciently accounted for, if we regard the Creator as modelling 

 his creatures after the same ideal plan, and bear in mind 



