THE UNITY OF NATURE. 271 



the living organism." 1 This " science of rudimentary, 

 abortive, arrested, distorted, atrophied, and cata- 

 plastic individuals " is based on an immense quantity 

 of remarkable phenomena, which were long familiar 

 to zoologists and botanists, but were not properly 

 interpreted, and their great philosophic significance 

 appreciated, until Darwin. 



All the higher animals and plants, or, in general, 

 all organisms which are not entirely simple in 

 structure, but are made up of a number of organs in 

 orderly co-operation, are found, on close examination, 

 to possess a number of useless or inoperative members, 

 sometimes, indeed, hurtful and dangerous. In the 

 flowers of most plants we find, besides the actual 

 sex-leaves that effect reproduction, a number of other 

 leaf-organs which have no use or meaning (arrested 

 or "miscarried" pistils, fruit, corona and calix- 

 leaves, etc.). In the two large and variegated classes 

 of riving animals, birds and insects, there are, besides 

 the forms which make constant use of their wings, a 

 number of species which have undeveloped wings and 

 cannot fly. In nearly every class of the higher 

 animals which have eyes there are certain types that 

 live in the dark ; they have eyes, as a rule, but 

 undeveloped and useless for vision. In our own 

 human organism we have similar useless rudimentary 

 structures in the muscles of the ear, in the eye-lid, in 

 the nipple and milk-gland of the male, and in other 

 parts of the body ; indeed, the vermiform appendix 

 of our caecum is not only useless, but extremely 

 dangerous, and inflammation of it is responsible for a 

 number of deaths every year. 



1 Cf. General Morphologzj, vol. ii., and The Natural History of 

 Creation. 



