ORGANIC EVOLUTION 49 



semi-lunar fold in the eye ; the coccyx, or trace of tail 

 at the end of the vertebral column; the milk teeth. 

 All these are what are called rudimentary organs. 

 None of them, save possibly the pineal gland, plays 

 any appreciable part in the human economy. Some of 

 them, as the hair on the arms, and the valves in the 

 (now) horizontal veins, would have been useful to an 

 animal walking on all fours. Others, as the vermiform 

 appendix, would be useful to an animal whose diet 

 was chiefly fruit, having four legs and needing longer 

 intestines. On the theory of special creation, how shall 

 these rudimentary organs be accounted for? Being of 

 no use to the organism, why should they have been 

 created in it ? But on the theory of evolution, by varia- 

 tion and heredity, they are understandable. 



It would seem difficult to name one of the higher 

 animals, in which, some part is not in a rudimentary 

 condition. In all mammalia, for instance, the males pos- 

 sess rudimentary mammae. The teeth in the upper 

 jaws of unborn calves, which never cut through the 

 gums, and also, in foetal whales, there are teeth, while 

 the matured whale never has any. How can these be 

 accounted for by special creation? G-. H. Lewes men- 

 tions the Salamander which lives on land, away from 

 water. Yet, the pregnant female bears tadpoles with 

 finely feathered gills, and if taken from her, in the 

 embryonic state, and put in water, swim like the 

 tadpoles of the water-newt. It is stated, that in some 

 older works on natural history where authors were 

 believers in special creation, rudimentary organs are 

 accounted for, by saying they have been created, for 

 the sake of symmetry, or to complete the scheme of 

 nature. As remarked by Darwin, what would be 

 thought of an astronomer who maintained that the 



