THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY 121 



Caution, of course, is required in deciding as to 

 the inutility of any character, since its seeming 

 uselessness may only mean that we do not know 

 its use. But there are undoubtedly cases where 

 we know that certain vestigial structures are not 

 only useless to Man but worse than useless. 

 Coming under this category is perhaps the most 

 striking of all the vestigial organs, that of the 

 Vermiform Appendix of the Caecum. Here is 

 a structure which is not only of no use to man 

 now, but is a veritable death-trap. In herbivorous 

 animals this " blind-tube " is very large — longer in 

 some cases than the body itself — and of great use 

 in digestion, but in Man it is shrunken into the 

 merest rudiment, while in the Orang-outang it is 

 only a little larger. In the human subject, owing 

 to its diminutive size, it can be of no use whatever, 

 while it forms an easy receptacle for the lodgment 

 of foreign bodies, such as fruit-stones, which set up 

 inflammation, and in various ways cause death. In 

 man this tube is the same in structure as the rest 

 of the intestine; it is "covered with peritoneum, 

 possesses a muscular coat, and is lined with mucous 

 membrane. In the early embryo it is equal in 

 calibre to the rest of the bowel, but at a certain 

 date it ceases to grow pari passu with it, and at 

 the time of birth appears as a thin tubular appendix 



