et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 27 



abruptly. There is no escape : the neces- 

 sity is absolute. And as with the hippo- 

 potamus, so with the- other animals of the 

 kind, whose means of attaining the same 

 end f are often far more elaborate. As, e.g., 

 the whale. 



A similar, but otherwise very different, 

 case, is the epiglottis, which in animals that 

 have it is a sort of trapdoor, preventing 

 foreign bodies from entering the windpipe. 

 What happens when, as occasionally takes 

 place, they do, everybody knows by expe- 

 rience. And now, again, how is it POSSIBLE 

 for such an organ to arise, except abruptly ? 

 How could ' Natural Selection/ or slight 

 successive increments accumulated by the 

 survival of the fittest, have originated an 

 organ, without which in its complete con- 



f Thus J. G. Wood expressly compares the water beetles, 

 in this respect to the whales and seals among mammalia. 

 (Insects Abroad, p. 70. ) 



